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FACTS AND FANCIES IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



FACTS AND FANCIES 



IN 



MODERN SCIENCE: 



STUDIES OF THE RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO 

PREVALENT SPECULATIONS AND 

RELIGIOUS BELIEF. 



BEING THE LECTURES ON THE SAMUEL A. CROZER FOUNDA- 
TION IN CONNECTION WITH THE CROZER THEOLOG- 
ICAL SEMINARY, FDR 1881. 



BY 



. J. W. DAWSON, LL.D., F.R.S. Etc. 









■ 




PHILADELPHIA : 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 

1420 CHESTNUT STREET. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1882, by the 

AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereolypers and Electrotypers, Philada. 



PREFACE. 



THE object before the mind of the author 
in preparing these Lectures was to pre- 
sent a distinct and rational view of the present 
relation of scientific thought to the religious 
beliefs of men, and especially to the Christian 
revelation. 

The attempt to make science, or specula- 
tions based on science, supersede religion is 
one of the prevalent fancies of our time, and 
pervades much of the popular literature of 
the day. That such attempts can succeed the 
author does not believe. They have hitherto 
given birth only to such abortions as Positiv- 
ism, Nihilism, and Pessimism. 

There is, however, a necessary relation and 
parallelism of all truths, physical and spiritual ; 
and it is useful to clear away the apparent 
antagonisms which proceed from partial and 
imperfect views, and to point out the harmony 

1* 5 



6 PREFACE. 

which exists between the natural and the spir- 
itual — between what man can learn from the 
physical creation, and what has been revealed 
to him by the Spirit of God. To do this with 
as much fairness as possible, and with due 
regard to the present state of knowledge and 
to the most important difficulties that are like- 
ly to be met with by honest inquirers, is the 
purpose of the following pages. 

It is proper to add that, in order to give com- 
pleteness to the discussion, it has been neces- 
sary to introduce, in some of the lectures, topics 
previously treated of by the author, in a similar 
manner, in publications bearing his name. 

J. W. D. 

April, 1882. 



CONTENTS. 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

GENERAL RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND AGNOSTIC 

SPECULATION 9 



LECTURE II. 

THE SCIENCE OF LIFE AND MONISTIC EVOLUTION. 47 

LECTURE III. 

EVOLUTION AS TESTED BY THE RECORDS OF THE 
ROCKS 103 

LECTURE IV. 
THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN . 137 

LECTURE V. 
NATURE AS A MANIFESTATION OF MIND 175 

LECTURE VI. 

SCIENCE AND REVELATION 217 

7 



I. 

GENERAL RELATIONS 



OF 



Science and Agnostic Speculation. 



LECTURE I. 

GENERAL RELATIONS OF SCIENCE AND AGNOSTIC 
SPECULATION. 

THE infidelity and the contempt for sa- 
cred and spiritual things which pervade 
so much of our modern literature are largely 
attributable to the prevalence of that form of 
philosophy which may be designated as Agnos- 
tic Evolution, and this in its turn is popularly 
regarded as a result of the pursuit of physical 
and natural science. The last conclusion is 
obviously only in part, if at all, correct, since it 
is well known that atheistic philosophical specu- 
lations were pursued, quite as boldly and ably 
as now, long before the rise of modern science. 
Still, it must be admitted that scientific discov- 
eries and principles have been largely employ- 
ed in our time to give form and consistency 
to ideas otherwise very dim and shadowy, and 
thus to rehabilitate for our benefit the philo- 
sophical dreams of antiquity in a more substan- 
tial shape. In this respect the natural sciences 

11 



12 FACTS AND FANCIES 

— or, rather, the facts and laws with which they 
are conversant — merely share the fate of other 
things. Nothing, however indifferent in itself, 
can come into human hands without acquiring 
thereby an ethical, social, political, or even re- 
ligious, significance. An ounce of lead or a 
dynamite cartridge may be in itself a thing 
altogether destitute of any higher significance 
than that depending on physical properties ; 
but let it pass into the power of man, and at 
once infinite possibilities of good and of evil 
cluster round it according to the use to which 
it may be applied. This depends on essential 
powers and attributes of man himself, of which 
he can no more be deprived than matter can 
be denuded of its inherent properties ; and if 
the evils arising from misuse of these powers 
trouble us, we may at least console ourselves 
with the reflection that the possibility of such 
evils shows man to be a free agent, and not an 
automaton. 

All this is eminently applicable to science 
in its relation to agnostic speculations. The 
material of the physical and natural sciences 
consists of facts ascertained by the evidence of 
our senses, and for which we depend on the 
truthfulness of those senses and the stability 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 3 

of external nature. Science proceeds, by com- 
parison of these facts and by inductive rea- 
soning, to arrange them under certain general 
expressions or laws. So far all is merely phys- 
ical, and need have no connection with our 
origin or destiny or relation to higher powers. 
But we ourselves are a part of the nature 
which we study ; and we cannot study it with- 
out more or less thinking our own thoughts 
into it. Thus we naturally begin to inquire 
as to origins and first causes, and as to the 
source of the energy and order which we per- 
ceive ; and to these questions the human mind 
demands some answer, either actual or specu- 
lative. But here we enter into the domain of 
religious thought, or that which relates to a 
power or powers beyond and above nature. 
Whatever forms our thoughts on such subjects 
may take, these depend, not directly on the facts 
of science, but on the reaction of our minds on 
these facts. They are truly anthropomorphic. 
It has been well said that it is as idle to inquire 
as to the origin of such religious ideas as to 
inquire as to the origin of hunger and thirst. 
Given the man, they must necessarily exist. 
Now, whatever form these philosophical or 
religious ideas may take — whether that of Ag- 

2 



14 FACTS AND FANCIES 

nosticism or Pantheism or Theism — science, 
properly so called, has no right to be either 
praised or blamed. Its material may be used, 
but the structure is the work of the artificer 
himself. 

It is well, however, to carry with us the truth 
that this border-land between science and re- 
ligion is one which men cannot be prevented 
from entering; but what they may find therein 
depends very much on themselves. Under wise 
guidance it may prove to us an Eden, the very 
gate of heaven, and we may acquire in it larger 
and more harmonious views of both the seen 
and the unseen, of science and of religion. But, 
on the other hand, it may be found to be a bat- 
tle-field or a bedlam, a place of confused cries 
and incoherent ravings v and strewn with the 
wrecks of human hopes and aspirations. 

There can be no question that the more un- 
pleasant aspect of the matter is somewhat prev- 
alent in our time, and that we should, if possible, 
understand the causes of the conflict and the 
confusion that prevail, and the way out of 
them. To do this it will be necessary first to 
notice some of the incidental or extraneous 
causes of difficulty and strife, and then to in- 
quire more in detail as to the actual bearing 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. I 5 

of the scientific knowledge of nature on Ag- 
nosticism. 

One fruitful cause of difficulty in the rela- 
tions of science and religion is to be found in 
the narrowness and incapacity of well-meaning 
Christians who unnecessarily bring the doc- 
trines of natural and revealed religion into 
conflict, by misunderstanding the one or the 
other, or by attaching obsolete scientific ideas 
to Holy Scripture, and identifying them with 
it in points where it is quite non-committal. 
Much mischief is also done by a prevalent habit 
of speaking of all, or nearly all, the votaries 
of science as if they were irreligious. 

A second cause is to be found in the extrav- 
agant speculations indulged in by the adherents 
of certain philosophical systems. Such specu- 
lations often far overpass the limits of actual 
scientific knowledge, and are yet paraded be- 
fore the ignorant as if they were legitimate re- 
sults of science, and so become irretrievably 
confounded with it in the popular mind. 

A third influence, more closely connected 
with science itself, arises from the rapidity of 
the progress of discovery and of the - practical 
applications of scientific facts and principles. 
This has unsettled the minds of men, and has 



1 6 FACTS AND FANCIES 

given them the idea that nothing is beyond 
their reach. There is thus a vague notion that 
science has overcome so many difficulties, and 
explained so many mysteries, that it may ulti- 
mately satisfy all the wants of man and leave 
no scope for religious belief. Those who know 
the limitations of our knowledge of material 
things may not share this delusion; but there 
is reason to fear that many, even of scientific 
men, are carried away by it, and it widely af- 
fects the minds of general readers. 

Again, science has in the course of its growth 
become divided into a great number of small 
specialties, each pursued ardently by its own 
votaries. This is beneficial in one respect ; for 
much more can be gained by men digging down- 
ward, each on his own vein of valuable ore, 
than by all merely scraping the surface. But 
the specialist, as he descends fathom after fath- 
om into his mine, however rich and rare the 
gems and metals he may discover, becomes 
more and more removed from the ordinary 
ways of men, and more and more regardless 
of the products of other veins as valuable as 
his own. The specialist, however profound he 
may become in the knowledge of his own lim- 
ited subject, is on that very account less fitted 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 7 

to guide his fellow-men in the pursuit of gen- 
eral truth. When he ventures to the bounda- 
ries between his own and other domains of 
truth, or when he conceives the idea that his 
own little mine is the sole deposit of all that 
requires to be known, he sometimes makes 
grave mistakes ; and these pass current for a 
time as the dicta of high scientific authority. 

Lastly, the lowest influence of all is that which 
sometimes regulates what may be termed the 
commercial side of science. Here the demand 
is very apt to control the supply. New facts 
and legitimate conclusions cannot be produced 
with sufficient rapidity to satisfy the popular 
craving, or they are not sufficiently exciting to 
compete with other attractions. Science has 
then to enter the domain of imagination, and 
the last new generalization — showy and spe- 
cious, but perhaps baseless as the plot of the 
last new novel — brings grist to the mill of the 
" scientist " and his publisher. 

Only one permanent and final remedy is pos- 
sible for these evils, and that is a higher moral 
tone and more thorough scientific education on 
the part of the general public. Until this can 
be secured, true science is sure to be surrounded 

with a mental haze of vague hypotheses clothed 
2* 



1 8 FACTS AND FANCIES 

in ill-defined language, and which is mistaken by 
the multitude for science itself. Yet true science 
should not be held responsible for this, except 
in so far as its material is used to constitute the 
substance of the pseudo-gnosis which surrounds 
it. Science is in this relation the honest house- 
holder whose goods may be taken by thieves 
and applied to bad uses, or the careful amasser 
of wealth which may be dissipated by spend- 
thrifts. 

It may be said that if these statements are 
true, the ordinary reader is helpless. How can 
he separate the true from the false ? Must he 
resign himself to the condition of one who 
either believes on mere authority or refuses to 
believe anything ? or must he adopt the attitude 
of the Pyrrhonist who thinks that anything may 
be either true or false ? But it is true, neverthe- 
less, that common sense may suffice to deliver 
us from much of the pseudo-science of our 
time, and to enable us to understand how lit- 
tle reason there is for the conflicts promoted 
by mere speculation between science and other 
departments of legitimate thought and inquiry. 

In illustrating this, we may in the present 
lecture consider that form of sceptical philos- 
ophy which in our time is the most prevalent, 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 9 

and which has the most specious air of de- 
pendence on science. This is the system of 
Agnosticism combined with evolution of which 
Mr. Herbert Spencer is the most conspicuous 
advocate in the English-speaking world. This 
philosophy deals with two subjects — the cause 
or origin of the universe and of things therein, 
and the method of the progress of all from the 
beginning until now. Spencer sees nothing in 
the first of these but mere force or energy, 
nothing in the second but a spontaneous evo- 
lution. All beyond these is not only unknown, 
but unknowable. The theological and philo- 
sophical shortcomings of this doctrine have been 
laid bare by a multitude of critics, and I do not 
propose to consider it in these relations so much 
as in relation to science, which has much to say 
with respect to both force and evolution. 

An agnostic is literally one who does not 
know ; and, were the word used in its true 
and literal sense, Agnosticism would of neces- 
sity be opposed to science, since science is 
knowledge and quite incompatible with the 
want of it. But the modern agnostic does 
not pretend to be ignorant of the facts and 
principles of science. What he professes not 
to know is the existence of any power above 



20 FACTS AND FANCIES 

and beyond material nature. He goes a little 
farther, however, than mere absence of know- 
ledge. He holds that of God nothing can be 
known ; or he may put it a little more strongly, 
in the phrase of his peculiar philosophy, by say- 
ing that the existence of a God or of creation 
by divine power is " unthinkable." It is in this 
that he differs from the old-fashioned and now 
extinct atheist, who bluntly denied the exist- 
ence of a God. The modern agnostic assumes 
an attitude of greater humility and disclaims 
the actual denial of God. Yet he practically 
goes farther, in asserting the impossibility of 
knowing the existence of a Divine Being ; and 
in taking this farther step Agnosticism does 
more to degrade the human reason and to cut 
it off from all communion with anything beyond 
mere matter and force, than does any other form 
of philosophy, ancient or modern. 

Yet in this Agnosticism there is in one point 
an approximation to truth. If there is a God, 
he cannot be known directly and fully, and his 
plans and procedure must always be more 
or less incomprehensible. The writer of the 
book of Job puts this as plainly as any modern 
agnostic in the passage beginning " Canst thou 
by searching find out God?" — literally, " Canst 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 21 

thou sound the depths of God?" — and a still 
higher authority informs us that " no man hath 
seen God" — that is, known him as we know 
material things. In short, absolutely and essen- 
tially God is incomprehensible ; but this is no 
new discovery, and the mistake of the agnostic 
lies in failing to perceive that the same diffi- 
culty stands in the way of our perfectly know- 
ing anything whatever. We say that we know 
things when we mean that we know them in 
their properties, relations, or effects. In this 
sense the knowledge of God is perfectly pos- 
sible. It is impossible only in that other sense 
of the word "know" — if it can have such a 
sense — in which we are required to know 
things in their absolute essence and thorough- 
ly. Thus the term "agnostic" contains an in- 
itial fallacy in itself; and this philosophy, like 
many others, rests, in the first instance, on a 
mere jugglery of words. The real question is, 
" Is there a God who manifests himself to us 
mediately and practically?" and this is a ques- 
tion which we cannot afford to set aside by a 
mere play on the meanings of the verb " to 
know." 

If, however, any man takes this position and 
professes to be incapable of knowing whether 



22 FACTS AND FANCIES ' 

or not there is any power above and behind 
material things, it will be necessary to begin 
with the very elements of knowledge, and to 
inquire if there is anything whatever that he 
really knows and believes. 

Let us ask him if he can subscribe to the 
simple creed expressed in the words " I am, I 
feel, I think." Should he deny these proposi- 
tions, then there is no basis left on which to 
argue. Should he admit this much of belief, 
he has abandoned somewhat of his agnostic 
position ; for it would be easy to show that in 
even uttering the pronoun "I" he has com- 
mitted himself to the belief in the unknowable. 
What is the ego which he admits ? Is it the 
material organism or any one of its organs or 
parts? or is it something distinct, of which the. 
organism is merely the garment, or outward 
manifestation ? or is the organism itself any- 
thing more than a bundle of appearances par- 
tially known and scarcely understood by that 
which calls itself "I"? Who knows ? And if 
our own personality is thus inscrutable, if we. 
can conceive of it neither as identical with the 
whole or any part of the organism nor as ex- 
isting independently of the organism, we should 
begin our Agnosticism here, and decline to utter 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 2$ 

the pronoun " I " as implying what we cannot 
know. Still, as a matter of faith, we must hold 
fast to the proposition "I exist" as the only 
standpoint for science, philosophy, or common 
life. If we are asked for evidence of this faith, 
we can appeal only to our consciousness of 
effects which imply the existence of the ego, 
which we thus have to admit or suppose before 
we can begin to prove even its existence. 

This fact of the mystery of our own exist- 
ence is full of material for thought. It is in 
itself startling — even appalling. We feel that 
it is a solemn, a dreadful, thing to exist, and to 
exist in that limitless space and that eternal time 
which we can no more understand than we can 
our own constitution, though our belief in their 
-existence is inevitable. Nor can we divest our- 
selves of anxious thoughts as to the source, 
tendencies, and end of our own being. Here, 
in short, we already reach the threshold of that 
dread unknown future and its possibilities, the 
realization of which by hope, fear, and imagina- 
tion constitutes, perhaps, our first introduction 
to the unseen world as distinguished from the 
present world of sense. The agnostic may 
smile if he pleases at religion as a puerile 
fancy, but he knows, like other men, that the 



24 FACTS AND FANCIES 

mere consciousness of existence necessarily 
links itself with a future — nay, unending — exist- 
ence, and that any being with this conscious- 
ness of futurity must have at least a religion 
of hope and fear. In this we find an intelli- 
gible reason for the universality of religious 
ideas in relation to a future life. Even where 
this leads to beliefs that may be called super- 
stitious, it is more reasonable than Agnosticism ; 
for it is surely natural that a being inscrutable 
by himself should be led to believe in the ex- 
istence of other things equally inscrutable, but 
apparently related to himself. 

But the thinking " I " dwells in the midst of 
what we term 'external objects. In a certain 
sense it treats the parts of its own bodily or- 
ganism as if they were things external to it, 
speaking of " my hand," " my head," as if they 
were its property. But there are things prac- 
tically infinite beyond the organism itself. We 
call them objects or things, but they are only 
appearances ; and we know only their relations 
to ourselves and to each other. Their essence, 
if they have any, is inscrutable. We say that 
th*e appearances indicate matter and energy, 
but what these are essentially we know not. 
We reduce matter to atoms, but it is impossible 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 2$ 

for us to have any conception of an atom or of 
the supposed ether, whether itself in some 
sense atomic or not, including such atoms. 
Our attempts to form rational conceptions of 
atoms resolve themselves into complex conjec- 
tures as to vortices of ethers and the like, of 
which no one pretends to have any distinct 
mental picture ; yet on this basis of the incom- 
prehensible rests all our physical science, the 
first truths in which are really matters of pure 
faith in the existence of that which we cannot 
understand. Yet all men would scoff at the 
agnostic who on this account should express 
unbelief in physical science. 

Let us observe here, further, that since the 
mysterious and inscrutable "I" is surrounded 
with an equally mysterious and inscrutable 
universe, and since the ego and the external 
world are linked together by indissoluble rela- 
tions, we are introduced to certain alternatives 
as to origins. Either the universe or "nature" 
is a mere phantom conjured up by the ego, or 
the ego is a product of the universe, or both 
are the result of some equally mysterious pow- 
er beyond us and the material world. Neither 
of these suppositions is absurd or unthinkable ; 
and, whichever of them we adopt, we are again 

3 



26 FACTS AND FANCIES 

introduced to what may be termed a religion as 
well as a philosophy. On one view, man be- 
comes a god to himself ; on another, nature be- 
comes his god ; on the third, a Supreme Being, 
the Creator of both. All three religions exist 
in the world in a vast variety of forms, and it 
is questionable if any human being does not 
more or less give credence to one or the other. 
Scientific men, even when they think proper 
to call themselves idealists, must reject the first 
of the above alternatives, since they cannot 
doubt the objective existence of external na- 
ture, and they know that its existence dates 
from a time anterior to our possible existence 
as human beings. They may hold to either 
of the others ; and, practically, the minds of stu- 
dents of science are divided between the idea 
of a spontaneous evolution of all things from 
self-existent matter and force, and that of the 
creation of all by a self-existent, omnipotent, and 
all-wise Creator. From certain points of view, 
it may be of no consequence whether a scien- 
tific man holds one or other of these views. 
Self-existent force or power, capable of spon- 
taneous inception of change, and of orderly 
and infallible development according to laws 
of its own imposition or enactment, which is 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 2J 

demanded on the one hypothesis, scarcely 
differs from the conception of an intelligent 
Creator demanded on the other, while it is, to 
say the least, equally incomprehensible. It is/* 
besides, objectionable to science, on the ground 
that it requires us to assume properties in 
matter and energy quite at variance with the 
results of experience. The remarkable alter- 
native presented by Tyndall in his Belfast Ad- 
dress well expresses this : " Either let us open 
our doors freely to the conception of creative 
acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically 
change our notions of matter." The expres- 
sion " creative acts " here is a loose and not 
very accurate one for the operation of creative 
power. The radical change in " our notions of 
matter" involves an entire reversal of all that 
science knows of its essential properties. This 
being understood, the sentence is a fair expres- 
sion of the dilemma in which the agnostic and 
the materialist find themselves. 

Between the two hypotheses above stated 
there is, however, one material and vital dif- 
ference, depending on the nature of man him- 
self. The universe does not consist merely of 
insensate matter and force and automatic vital- 
ity ; there happens to be in it the rational and 



28 FACTS AND FANCIES 

consciously responsible being man. To attrib- 
ute to him an origin from mere matter and 
force is not merely to attach to them a fictitious 
power and significance : it is also to reject the 
rational probability that the original cause must 
be at least equal to the effects produced, and to 
deprive ourselves of all communion and sympa- 
thy with nature. Further, wherever the " pres- 
ence and potency " of human reason resides, 
there seems no reason to prevent our search- 
ing for and finding it in the only way in which 
we can know anything, in its properties and 
effects. The dogma of Agnosticism, it is true, 
refuses to permit this search after God, but it 
does so with as little reason as any of those 
self-constituted authorities that demand belief 
without questioning. Nay, it has the offensive 
peculiarity that in the very terms in which it 
issues its prohibition it contradicts itself. The 
same oracle which asserts that " the power 
which the universe manifests to us is wholly 
inscrutable " affirms also that " we must inevita- 
bly commit ourselves to the hypothesis of a 
first cause." Thus we are told that a power 
which is " manifest " is also " inscrutable," and 
that we must " commit ourselves " to a belief 
in a " first cause " which on the hypothesis can- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 29 

not be known to exist. This may be philosophy 
of a certain sort, but it certainly should not 
claim kinship with science. 

Perhaps it may be well here to place in com- 
parison with each other the doctrine of the 
agnostic philosophy as expounded by Herbert 
Spencer, and that of Paul of Tarsus — an older, 
but certainly a not less acute, thinker — and we 
may refer to their utterances respecting the 
origin of the universe. 

Spencer says : " The verbally intelligent sup- 
positions respecting the origin of the universe 
are three: (i) It is self-existent; (2) It is self- 
created ; (3) It is created by an external agen- 
cy." On these it may be remarked that the 
second is scarcely even " verbally intelligent ;" 
it seems to be a contradiction in terms. The 
third admits of an important modification, which 
was manifest to . Spinosa if not to Spencer — 
namely, that the Creator may — nay, must — be 
not merely " external," but within the universe 
as well. If there is a God, he must be in the 
universe as a pervading power, and in every 
part of it, and must not be shut out from his 
own work. This mistaken conception of God 
as building himself out of his own universe and 
acting on it by external force is both irrational 
3* 



30 FACTS AND FANCIES 

and unscientific, being, for example, quite at 
variance with the analogy of force and life. 
Rightly understood, therefore, Spencer's alter- 
natives resolve themselves into two — either the 
universe is self-existent, or it is the work of a 
self-existent Creator pervading all things with 
his power. Of these, Spencer prefers the first. 
Paul, on the other hand, referring to the mental 
condition of the civilized heathens of his time, 
affirms that rationally they could believe only 
in the hypothesis of creation. He says of 
God : " His invisible things, even his eternal 
power and divinity, can be perceived (by the 
reason), being understood by the things that 
are made." Let us look at these rival proposi- 
tions. Is the universe self-existent, or does it 
show evidence of creative power and divinity ? 
The doctrine that the universe is self-existent 
may be understood in different ways. It may 
mean either an endless succession of such 
changes as we now see in progress, or an 
eternity of successive cycles proceeding through 
the course of geological ages and ever return- 
ing into themselves. The first is directly con- 
trary to known facts in the geological history 
of the earth, and cannot be maintained by any 
one. The second would imply that the known 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 3 1 

geological history is merely a part of one great 
cycle of an endless series, and of which an in- 
finite number have already passed away. It is 
evident that this infinite succession of cycles is 
quite as incomprehensible as any other infinite 
succession of things or events. But, waiving 
this objection, we have the alternative either 
that all the successive cycles are exactly alike — 
which could not be, in accordance with evolu- 
tion, nor with the analogy of other natural 
cycles — or there must have been a progression 
in the successive cycles. But this last supposi- 
tion would involve an uncaused beginning some- 
where, and this of such a character as to deter- 
mine all the successive cycles and their progress ; 
which would again be contrary to the hypo- 
thesis of self-existence. It is useless, however, 
to follow such questions farther, since it is evi- 
dent that this hypothesis accounts for nothing 
and would involve us in absolute confusion. 

Let us turn now to Paul's statement. This 
has the merit, in the first place, of expressing a 
known fact — namely, that men do infer power 
and divinity from nature. But is this a mere 
superstition, or have they reason for it? If 
the universe be considered as a vast machine 
exceeding all our powers of calculation in its 



32 FACTS AND FANCIES 

magnitude and complexity, it seems in the last 
degree absurd to deny that it presents evidence 
of "power." Dr. Carpenter, in a recent lecture, 
illustrates the position of the agnostic in this 
respect by supposing him to examine the ma- 
chinery of a great mill, and, having found that 
this is all set in motion by a huge iron shaft 
proceeding from a brick wall, to suppose that 
this shaft is self-acting, and that there is no 
cause of motion beyond. But when we con- 
sider the variety and the intricacy of nature, 
the unity and the harmony of its parts, and the 
adaptation of these to an incalculable number 
of uses, we find something more than power. 
There is a fitting" together of things in a man- 
ner not only above our imitation, but above our 
comprehension. To refer this to mere chance 
or to innate tendencies or potencies of things 
we feel to be but an empty form of words ; 
consequently, we are forced to admit super- 
human contrivance in nature, or what Paul 
terms "divinity." Further, since the history 
of the universe eoes back farther than we can 
calculate, and as we can know nothing beyond 
the First Cause, we infer that the Power and 
Divinity which we have ascertained in nature 
must be " eternal." Again, since the creative 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 33 

power must at some point in past time have 
spontaneously begun to act, we regard it as a 
"living" power, which is the term elsewhere 
used by Paul in expressing the idea of " per- 
sonality " as held by theologians. Lastly, if 
everything that we know thus testifies to an 
eternal power and divinity, to maintain that 
we can know nothing of this First Cause must 
be simply nonsense, unless we are content to 
fall back on absolute nihilism, and hold that 
w r e know nothing whatever, either relatively or 
absolutely ; but in this case not only is science 
dethroned, but reason herself is driven from 
her seat, and there is nothing left for us to dis- 
cuss. Paul's idea is thus perfectly clear and 
consistent, and it is not difficult to see that 
common sense must accept this doctrine of an 
Eternal Living Power and Divinity in prefer- 
ence to the hypothesis of Spencer. 

So far we have considered the general bear- 
ing of agnostic and theistic theories on our 
relations to nature ; but if we are to test these 
theories fully by scientific considerations, we 
must look a little more into details. The exist- 
ences experimentally or inductively known to 
science may be grouped under three heads- — 
matter, energy, and law ; and each of these 



34 FACTS AND FANCIES 

has an independent testimony to give with ref- 
erence to its origin and its connection with a 
higher creative power. 

Matter, it is true, occupies a somewhat equiv- 
ocal place in the agnostic philosophy. Accord- 
ing to Spencer, it is " built up or extracted from 
experiences of force," and it is only by force 
that it " demonstrates itself to us as existing." 
This is true ; but that which " demonstrates 
itself to us as existing " must exist, in whatever 
way the demonstration is made, and Spencer 
does not, in consequence of the lack of direct 
evidence, extend his Agnosticism to matter, 
though he might quite consistently do so. In 
any case, science postulates the existence of 
matter. Further, science is obliged to conceive 
of matter as composed of atoms, and of atoms 
of different kinds ; ' for atoms differ in weight 
and in chemical properties, and these differ- 
ences are to us ultimate, for they cannot be 
changed. Thus science and practical life are 
tied down to certain predetermined properties 
of matter. We may, it is true, in future be 
able to reduce the number of kinds of matter, 
by finding that some bodies believed to be sim- 
ple are really compound ; but this does not 
affect the question in hand. As to the origin 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 35 

of the diverse properties of atoms, only two 
suppositions seem possible : either in some past 
period they agreed to differ and to divide them- 
selves into different kinds suitable in quantity 
and properties to make up the universe, or 
else matter in its various kinds has been skil- 
fully manufactured by a creative power. 

But there is a scientific way in which matter 
may be resolved into force. An iron knife 
passed through a powerful magnetic current is 
felt to be resisted, as if passing through a solid 
substance, and this resistance is produced mere- 
ly by magnetic attraction. Why may it not be 
so with resistance in general ? To give effect 
to such a supposition, and to reconcile it with 
the facts of chemistry and of physics, it is ne- 
cessary to suppose that the atoms of matter are 
merely minute vortices or whirlwinds set up in 
an ethereal medium, which in itself, and when 
at rest, does not possess any of the properties 
of matter. That such an ethereal medium exists 
we have reason to believe from the propagation 
of light and heat through space, though we 
know little, except negatively, of its properties. 
Admitting, however, its existence, the setting up 
in it of the various kinds of vortices constitut- 
ing the atoms of different kinds of matter is 



36 FACTS AND FANCIES 

just as much in need of a creative power to 
initiate it as the creation of matter out of noth- 
ing would be. Besides this, we now have to 
account for the existence of the ether itself; 
and here we have the disadvantage that this 
substance possesses none of the properties of 
ordinary matter except mere extension ; that, 
in so far as we know, it is continuous, and not 
molecular; and that, while of the most incon- 
ceivable tenuity, it transmits vibrations in a man- 
ner similar to that of a body of the extremest 
solidity. It would seem, also, to be indefinite in 
extent and beyond the control of the ordinary 
natural forces. In short, ether is as incompre- 
hensible as Deity ; and if we suppose it to have 
instituted spontaneously the different kinds of 
matter, we have really constituted it a god, which 
is what, in a loose way, some ancient mytholo- 
gies actually did. We may, however, truly say 
that this modern scientific conception of the 
practically infinite and all-pervading ether, the 
primary seat of force, brings us nearer than 
ever before to some realization of the Spirit- 
ual Creator. 

But to ether both science and Agnosticism 
must superadd energy — the entirely immaterial 
something which moves ether itself. The rather 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 37 

crude scientific notion that certain forces are 
" modes of motion " perhaps blinds us some- 
what to the mystery of energy. Even if we 
knew no other form of force than heat, which 
moves masses of matter or atoms, it would be 
in many respects an inscrutable thing. But 
as traversing the subtle ether in such forms as 
radiant heat, light, chemical force, and electricity, 
energy becomes still more mysterious. Perhaps 
it is even more so in what seems to be one of 
its primitive forms — that of gravitation, where 
it connects distant bodies apparently without 
any intervening medium. Facts of this kind 
appear to bring us still nearer to the concep- 
tion of an all-pervading immaterial creative 
power. 

But perhaps what may be termed the deter- 
minations of force exhibit this still more clearly, 
as a very familiar instance may show. Our 
sun — one of a countless number of similar 
suns — is to us the great centre of light and 
heat, sustaining all processes, whether merely 
physical or vital, on our planet. It was a grand 
conception of certain old religions to make the 
sun the emblem of God, though sun-worship 
was a substitution of the creature for the Cre- 
ator, and would have been dispelled by modern 



38 FACTS AND FANCIES 

discovery. But our sun is not merely one 
of countless suns, some of them of greater 
magnitude, but it is only a temporary de- 
pository of a limited quantity of energy, ever 
dissipating itself into space, calculable as to its 
amount and duration, and known to depend for 
its existence on gravitative force. We may 
imagine the beginning of such a luminary in 
the collision of great masses of matter rushing 
together under the influence of gravitation, and 
causing by their impact a conflagration capable 
of enduring for millions of years. Yet our im- 
agining such a rude process for the kindling 
of the sun will go a very little way in account- 
ing for all the mechanism of the solar system 
and things therein. Further, it raises new 
questions as to the original condition of mat- 
ter. If it was originally in one mass, whence 
came the incalculable power by which it was 
rent into innumerable suns and systems ? If 
it was once universally diffused in boundless 
space, when and how was the force of gravity 
turned on, and what determined its action in 
such a way as to construct the existing uni- 
verse ? This is only one of the simplest and 
baldest possible views of the intricate deter- 
minations of force displayed in the universe, 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 39 

yet it may suffice to indicate the necessity of a 
living and determining First Cause. 

The fact that all the manifestations of force 
are regulated by law by no means favors the 
agnostic view. The laws of nature are merely 
mental generalizations of our own, and, so far 
as they go, show a remarkable harmony be- 
tween our mental nature and that manifested 
in the universe. They are not themselves pow- 
ers capable of producing ^effects, but merely 
express what we can ascertain of uniformity 
of action in nature. The law of gravitation, 
for example, gives no clew to the origin of that 
force, but merely expresses its constant mode 
of action, in whatever way that may have been 
determined at first. Nor are natural laws de- 
crees of necessity. They might have been 
otherwise — nay, many of them may be other- 
wise in parts of the universe inaccessible to us, 
or they may change in process of time ; for the 
period over which our knowledge extends may 
be to the plans of the Creator like the lifetime 
of some minute insect which might imagine 
human arrangements of no great permanence 
to be of eternal duration. 

Unless the laws of nature were constant, in 
so far as our experience extends, we could have 



40 FACTS AND FANCIES 

no certain basis either for science or for practi- 
cal life. All would be capricious and uncertain, 
and we could calculate on nothing. Law thus 
adapts the universe to be the residence of ra- 
tional beings, and nothing else could. Viewed 
in this way, we see that natural laws must be, in 
their relation to a Creator, voluntary limitations 
of his power in certain directions for the bene- 
fit of his creatures. To secure this end, nature 
must be a perfect machine, all the parts of which 
are adjusted for permanent and harmonious 
action. It may perhaps rather be compared 
to a vast series of machines, each running in- 
dependently like the trains on a railway, but all 
connected and regulated by an invisible guid- 
ance which determines the time and the dis- 
tance of each, and the manner in which the less 
urgent and less important shall give place to 
others. Even this does not express the whole 
truth ; for the harmony of nature must be con- 
nected with constant change and progress to- 
ward higher perfection. Does this conception 
of natural law give us any warrant for the idea 
that the universe is a product of chance ? Is 
it not the highest realization of all that we can 
conceive of the plans of superhuman intelli- 
gence ? 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 4 1 

. The stupid notion — still lingering in certain 
quarters — that when anything has been referred 
to a natural law or to a secondary cause under 
law, God may be dispensed with in relation to 
that thing, is merely a survival of the supersti- 
tion that divine action must be of the nature 
of a capricious interference. The true theistic 
conception of law is that already stated, of a 
voluntary limitation of divine power in the in- 
terest of a material cosmos and its intelligent 
inhabitants. Nor is the permanence of law 
dependent on necessity or on mere mechanical 
routine, but on the unchanging will of the Leg- 
islator ; while the countless varieties and vicis- 
situdes of nature depend, not on caprice or on 
accidental interference, but on the interactions 
and adjustments of laws of different grades, and 
so numerous and varied in their scope and ap- 
plication and in the combinations of which they 
are capable that it is often impossible for finite 
minds to calculate their results. 

If, now, in conclusion, we are asked to sum 
up the hypotheses as to the origin of natural 
laws and of the properties and determinations 
of matter and force, we may do this under the 
following heads : 

i. Absolute creation by the will of a Supreme 

4 * 



42 FACTS AND FANCIES 

Intelligence, self-existent and omnipotent. This 
may be the ultimate fact lying behind all mate- 
rials, forces, and laws known to science. 

2. Mediate creation, or the making of new 
complex products with material already created 
and under laws previously existing. This is 
applicable not so much to the primary origin 
of things as to their subsequent determinations 
and modifications. 

3. Both of the above may be included under 
the expression " creation by law," implying the 
institution from the first of fixed laws or modes 
of action not to be subsequently deviated from. 

4. Theistic evolution, or the gradual devel- 
opment of the divine plans by the apparently 
spontaneous interaction of things made. This 
is- universally admitted to occur in the minor 
modifications of created things, though of course 
it can have no place as a mode of explaining 
actual origins, and it must be limited within 
the laws of nature established by the Creator. 
Practically, it might be difficult to make any 
sharp distinctions between such evolution and 
mediate creation. 

5. Agnostic and monistic evolution, which 
hold the spontaneous origination and differen- 
tiation of things out of primitive matter and 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 43 

force, self-existent or fortuitous. The monistic 
form of this hypothesis assumes one primary 
substance or existence potentially embracing 
all subsequent developments. 

These theories are, of course, not all antag- 
onistic to one another. They resolve them- 
selves into two groups, a theistic and an athe- 
istic. The former includes the first four ; the 
latter, the fifth. Any one who believes in God 
may suppose a primary creation of matter and 
energy, a subsequent moulding and fashioning 
of them mediately and under natural law, and 
also a gradual evolution of many new things 
by the interaction of things previously made 
This complex idea of the origin of things seems, 
indeed, to be the rational outcome of Theism. It 
is also the idea which underlies the old record 
in the book of Genesis, where we have first an 
absolute creation, and then a series of " mak- 
ings " and " placings," and of things " bringing 
forth " other things, in the course of the crea- 
tive periods. 

On the other hand, Agnosticism postulates 
primary force or forces self-existent and includ- 
ing potentially all that is subsequently evolved 
from them. The only way in which it approxi- 
mates to theism is in its extreme monistic form, 



44 FACTS AND FANCIES 

where the one force or power supposed to un- 
derlie all existence is a sort of God shorn of 
personality, will, and reason. 

The actual relations of these opposing theo- 
ries to science cannot be better explained than 
by a reference to the words of a leading mon- 
ist, whose views we shall have to notice in the 
next lecture. "If," says Haeckel, " anybody feels 
the necessity of representing the origin of mat- 
ter as the work of a supernatural creative force 
independent of matter itself, I would remind 
him that the idea of an immaterial force creat- 
ing matter in the first instance is an article of 
faith which has nothing to do with science. 
Where faith begins, science ends." 

Precisely so, if only we invert the last sen- 
tence and say, " Where science ends, faith be- 
gins." It is only by faith that we know of any 
force, or even of the atoms of matter them- 
selves, and in like manner it is " by faith we 
know that the creative ages have been consti- 
tuted by the word of God."* The only differ- 
ence is that the monist has faith in the potency 
of nothing to produce something, or of some- 
thing material to exist for ever and to acquire 
at some point of time the power spontaneously 

* Epistle to Hebrews, xi. 3. 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 45 

to enter on the process of development ; while 
the theist has faith in a primary intelligent Will 
as the Author of all things. The latter has this 
to confirm his faith — that it accords with what 
we know of the inertia of matter, of the con- 
stancy of forces, and of the permanence of 
natural law, and is in harmony with the powers 
of the one free energy we know — that of the 
human will. 



II. 

THE SCIENCE 



OF 



Life and Monistic Evolution. 



LECTURE II. 

THE SCIENCE OF LIFE AND MONISTIC EVOLUTION. 

IN the last lecture we have noticed the gen- 
eral relations of agnostic speculations with 
natural science, and have exposed their failure 
to account for natural facts and laws. We 
may now inquire into their mode of dealing 
with the phenomena of life, with regard to the 
supposed spontaneous evolution of which, and 
its development up to man himself, so many 
confident generalizations have been put forth 
by the agnostic and monistic philosophy. 

In the earlier history of modern natural sci- 
ence, the tendency was to take nature as we 
find it, without speculation as to the origin of 
living things, which men were content to regard 
as direct products of creative power. But at 
a very early period — and especially after the 
revelations of geology had disclosed a suc- 
cession of ascending dynasties of life — such 
speculations, which, independently of science, 
had commended themselves to the poetical and 

5 49 



50 FACTS AND FANCIES 

philosophical minds of antiquity, were revived. 
In France more particularly, the theories of Buf- 
fon, Lamarck, and Geoffroy St. Hilaire opened 
up these exciting themes, and they might even 
then have attained to the importance they have 
since acquired but for the great and judicial 
intellect of Cuvier, which perceived their futil- 
ity and guided the researches of naturalists 
into other and more profitable fields. The 
next stimulus to such hypotheses w r as given 
by the progress of physiology, and especially 
by researches into the embryonic development 
of animals and plants. Here it was seen that 
there are homologies and likenesses of plan 
linking organisms with each other, and that in 
the course of their development the more com- 
plex creatures pass through stages correspond- 
ing to the adult condition of lower forms. The 
questions raised by the geographical distribu- 
tion of animals, as ascertained by the numerous 
expeditions and scientific travellers of modern 
times, tended in the same direction. The way 
was thus prepared for the broad generalizations 
of Darwin, who, seizing on the idea of artificial 
selection as practised by breeders of animals 
and plants, and imagining that something sim- 
ilar takes place in the natural struggle for 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 5 1 

existence, saw in this a plausible solution for 
the question of the progress and the variety 
of organized beings. 

The original Darwinian theory was soon 
found to be altogether insufficient to account 
for the observed facts, because of the tendency 
of the bare struggle for existence to produce deg- 
radation rather than elevation ; because of the 
testimony of geology to the fact that introduction 
of new species takes place in times of expan- 
sion rather than of struggle ; because of the 
manifest tendency of the breeds produced by 
artificial selection to become infertile and die 
out in proportion to their deviation from the 
original types ; and because of the difficulty 
of preventing such breeds from reverting to 
the original forms, which seem in all cases to 
be perfectly equilibrated in their own parts and 
adapted to external nature, so that varieties 
tend, as if by gravitative law, to fall back 
into the original moulds. A great variety of 
other considerations — as those of sexual selec- 
tion, reproductive acceleration and retardation, 
periods of more and less rapid evolution, innate 
tendency to vary at particular times and in par- 
ticular circumstances — have been imported into 
the original doctrine. Thus the original Dar- 



52 FACTS AND FANCIES 

winism is a thing of the past, even in the mind 
of its great author, though it has proved the 
fruitful parent of a manifold progeny of allied 
ideas which continue to bear its name. In this 
respect Darwinism is itself amenable to the 
law of evolution, and has been continually 
changing its form under the influence of the con- 
troversial struggles which have risen around it. 

Darwinism was not necessarily atheistic or 
agnostic. Its author was content to assume a 
few living beings or independent forms to begin 
with, and did not propose to obtain them by any 
spontaneous action of dead matter, nor to ac- 
count for the primary origin of life, still less of 
all material things. In this he was sufficiently 
humble and honest ; but the logical weakness 
of his position was at once apparent. If crea- 
tion was needed to give a few initial types, it 
might have produced others also. The followers 
of Darwin, therefore, more especially in Ger- 
many, at once pushed the doctrine back into 
Agnosticism and Monism, giving to it a greater 
logical consistency, but bringing it into violent 
conflict with theism and with common sense. 

Darwin himself early perceived that his doc- 
trine, if true, must apply to man — in so far, at 
least, as his bodily frame is concerned. Man is 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 53 

in this an animal, and closely related to other 
animals. To have claimed for him a distinct 
origin would have altogether discredited the 
theory, though it might be admitted that, man 
having appeared, his free volition and his moral 
and social instincts would at once profoundly 
modify the course of the evolution. On the 
other hand, the gulf which separates the reason 
and the conscience of man from instinct and 
the animal intelligence of lower creatures op- 
posed an almost impassable barrier to the union 
of man with lower animals ; and the attempt to 
bridge this gulf threatened to bring the theory 
into a deadly struggle with the moral, social, 
and religious instincts of mankind. In face of 
this difficulty, Darwin and most of his followers 
adopted the more daring course of maintaining 
the evolution of the whole man from lower 
forms, and thereby entered into a warfare, 
which still rages, with psychology, ethics, phi- 
lology, and theology. 

It is easy for shallow evolutionists unaware 
of the tendencies of their doctrine, or for lat- 
itudinarian churchmen careless as to the main- 
tenance of truth if only outward forms are pre- 
served and comprehension secured, to overlook 
or make light of these antagonisms, but science 

5* 



54 FACTS AND FANCIES 

and common sense alike demand a severe ad- 
herence to truth. It becomes, therefore, very 
important to ascertain to what extent we are 
justified in adopting the agnostic evolution in 
its relation to life and man on scientific grounds. 
Perhaps this may best be done by reviewing the 
argument of Haeckel in his work on the evolu- 
tion of man — one of the ablest, and at the same 
time most thorough, expositions of monistic ev- 
olution as applied to lower animals and to men. 
Ernst Haeckel is an eminent comparative 
anatomist and physiologist, who has earned a 
wide and deserved reputation by his able and 
laborious studies of the calcareous sponges, the 
radiolarians, and other low forms of life. In 
his work on The Evolution of Man he applies 
this knowledge to the solution of the problem 
of the origin of humanity, and sets himself not 
only to illustrate, but to " prove," the descent 
of our species from the simplest animal types, 
and even to overwhelm with scorn every other 
explanation of the appearance of man except 
that of spontaneous evolution. He is not 
merely an evolutionist, but what he terms a 
" monist," and the monistic philosophy, as de- 
fined by him, includes certain negations and 
certain positive principles of a most compre^ 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 55 

hensive and important character. It implies 
the denial of all spiritual or immaterial exist- 
ence. Man is to the monist merely a physio- 
logical machine, and nature is only a greater 
self-existing and spontaneously-moving aggre- 
gate of forces. Monism can thus altogether 
dispense with a Creative Will as originating 
nature, and adopts the other alternative of self- 
existence or causelessness for the universe and 
all its phenomena. Again, the monistic doctrine 
necessarily implies that man, the animal, the 
plant, and the mineral are only successive stages 
of the evolution of the same primordial matter, 
constituting thus a connected chain of being, all 
the parts of which sprang spontaneously from 
each other. Lastly, as the admixture of prim- 
itive matter and force would itself be a sort of 
dualism, Haeckel regards these as ultimately 
one, and apparently resolves the origin of the 
universe into the operation of a self-existing 
energy having in itself the potency of all things. 
After all, this may be said to be an approxima- 
tion to the idea of a Creator, but not a living and 
willing Creator. Monism is thus not identical 
with pantheism, but is rather a sort of atheistic 
monotheism, if such a thing is imaginable ; and 
vindicates the assertion attributed to a late la- 



56 FACTS AND FANCIES 

mented physical philosopher — that he had found 
no atheistic philosophy which had not a God 
somewhere. 

Haeckel's own statement of this aspect of 
his philosophy is somewhat interesting. He 
says : " The opponents of the doctrine of evo- 
lution are very fond of branding the monistic 
philosophy grounded upon it as ' materialism ' 
by comparing philosophical materialism with the 
wholly different and censurable moral material- 
ism. Strictly, however, our ' monism ' might as 
accurately or as inaccurately be called spiritual- 
ism as materialism. The real materialistic phi- 
losophy asserts that the phenomena of vital 
motion, like all other phenomena of motion, 
are effects or products of matter. The other 
opposite extreme, spiritualistic philosophy, 
asserts, on the contrary, that matter is the 
product of motive force, and that all material 
forms are produced by free forces entirely inde- 
pendent of the matter itself. Thus, according 
to the materialistic conception of the universe, 
matter precedes motion or active force ; accord- 
ing to the spiritualistic conception of the uni- 
verse, on the contrary, active force or motion 
precedes matter. Both views are dualistic, and 
we hold them both to be equally false. A con- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 57 

trast to both is presented in the monistic philos- 
ophy, which can as little believe in force without 
matter as in matter without force." 

It is evident that if Haeckel limits himself 
and his opponents to matter and force as the 
sole possible explanations of the universe, he 
may truly say that matter is inconceivable with- 
out force and force inconceivable without mat- 
ter. But the question arises, What is the 
monistic power beyond these — the " power be- 
hind nature " ? and as to the true nature of this 
the Jena philosopher gives us only vague gen- 
eralities, though it is quite plain that he cannot 
admit a Spiritual Creator. Further, as to the 
absence of any spiritual element from the 
nature of man, he does not leave us in doubt 
as to what he means ; for immediately after the 
above paragraph he informs us that " the - spirit ' 
and the ' mind ' of man are but forces which 
are inseparably connected with the material 
substance of our bodies. Just as the motive- 
power of our flesh is involved in the muscular 
form-element, so is the thinking force of our 
spirit involved in the form-element of the 
brain." In a note appended to the passage, 
he says that monism " conceives nature as 
one whole, and nowhere recognizes any but 



58 FACTS AND FANCIES 

mechanical causes." These assumptions as 
to man and nature pervade the whole book, 
and of course greatly simplify the task of the 
writer, as he does not require to account for the 
primary origin of nature, or for anything in man 
except his physical frame ; and even this he can 
regard as a thing altogether mechanical. 

It is plain that we might here enter our 
dissent from Haeckel's method, for he requires 
us, before we can proceed a single step in the 
evolution of man, to assume many things 
which he cannot prove. What evidence is 
there, for example, of the possibility of the 
development of the rational and moral nature 
of man from the intelligence and the instinct 
of the lower animals, or of the necessary 
dependence of the phenomena of mind on 
the structure of brain-cells ? The evidence, 
so far as it goes, seems to tend the other way. 
What proof is there of the spontaneous evolu- 
tion of living forms from inorganic matter? 
Experiment so far negatives the possibility 
of this. Even if we give Haeckel, to begin 
with, a single living cell or granule of pro- 
toplasm, we know that this protoplasm must 
have been produced by the agency of a liv- 
ing vegetable cell previously existing ; and we 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 59 

have no proof that it can be produced in 
any other way. Again, what particle of evi- 
dence have we that the atoms or the energy of 
an incandescent fire-mist have in them any- 
thing of the power or potency of life ? We 
must grant the monist all these postulates as 
pure matters of faith, before he can begin his 
demonstration ; and, as none of them are 
axiomatic truths, it is evident that so far he is 
simply a believer in the dogmas of a philo- 
sophic creed, and in this respect weak as other 
men whom he affects to despise. 

We may here place over against his authority 
that of another eminent physiologist, of more 
philosophic mind, Dr. Carpenter, who has re- 
cently said : "As a physiologist I must fully rec- 
ognize the fact that the physical force exerted 
by the body of man is not generated de novo by 
his will, but is derived directly from the oxida- 
tion of the constituents of his food. But, hold- 
ing it as equally certain — because the fact is 
capable of verification by every one as often as 
he chooses to make the experiment — that in 
the- performance of every volitional movement 
physical force is put in action, directed, and 
controlled by the individual personality or ego, 
I deem it as absurd and illogical to affirm that 



60 FACTS AND FANCIES 

there is no place for a God in nature, originat- 
ing, directing, and controlling its forces by his 
will, as it would be to assert that there is rio 
place in man's body for his conscious mind." 

Taking Haeckel on his own ground, as above 
defined, we may next inquire as to the method 
which he employs in working out his argument. 
This may be referred to three leading modes 
of treatment, which, as they are somewhat di- 
verse from those ordinarily familiar to logicians 
and are extensively used by evolutionists, de- 
serve some illustration, more especially as 
Haeckel is a master in their use. 

An eminent French professor of the art of 
sleight-of-hand has defined the leading principle 
of jugglers to be that of " appearing and dis- 
appearing things ;" and this is the best defini- 
tion that occurs to me of one method of rea- 
soning largely used by Haeckel, and of which 
we need to be on our guard when we find him 
employing, as he does in almost every page, 
such phrases as " it cannot be doubted," " we 
may "therefore assume," " we may readily sup- 
pose," " this afterward assumes or becomes," 
" we may confidently assert," " this developed 
directly," and the like, which in his usage are 
equivalent to the "Presto /" of the conjurer, and 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 6 1 

which, while we are looking at one structure or 
animal, enable him to persuade us that it has 
been suddenly transformed into something else. 

In tracing the genealogy of man he constant- 
ly employs this kind of sleight-of-hand in the 
most adroit manner. He is perhaps describing 
to us the embryo of a fish or an amphibian, and, 
as we become interested in the curious details, 
it is suddenly by some clever phrase trans- 
formed into a reptile or a bird ; and yet, with- 
out rubbing our eyes and reflecting on the dif- 
ferences and difficulties which he neglects to 
state, we can scarcely doubt that it is the same 
animal, after all. 

The little lancelet, or Amphioxus (see Fig. i), 
of the European seas — a creature which was at 
one time thought to be a sea-snail, but is really 
more akin to fishes — forms his link of connec- 
tion between our " fish-ancestors " and the in- 
vertebrate animals. So important is it in this 
respect that our author waxes eloquent in ex- 
horting us to regard it " with special venera- 
tion " as representing our " earliest Silurian 
vertebrate ancestors," as being of "our own 
flesh and blood," and. as better worthy of being 
an object of " devoutest reverence " than the 
" worthless rabble of so-called ' saints/ " In de- 



62 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

scribing this animal he takes pains to inform us 
that it is more different from an ordinary fish 
than a fish is from a man. Yet, as he illustrates 
its curious and unique structure, before we are 
aware, the lancelet is gone and a fish is in its 
place, and this fish with the potency to become 
a man in due time. Thus a creature interme- 
diate in some respects between fishes and mol- 
lusks, or between fishes and worms, but so far 
apart from either that it seems but to mark the 
width of the gap between them, becomes an 
easy stepping-stone from one to the other. 

In like manner, the ascidians, or sea-squirts — 
mollusks of low grade, or, as Haeckel prefers 
to regard them, allied to worms — are most re- 
mote in almost every respect from the verte- 
brates. But in the young state of some of 
these creatures, and in the adult condition of 
one animal referred to this group {Appendic- 
ularici), they have a sort of swimming tail, 
which is stiffened by a rod of cartilage to en- 
able it to perform its function, and which for a 
time gives them a certain resemblance to the 
lancelet or to embryo fishes ; and this usually 
temporary contrivance — curious as an imitative 
adaptation, but of no other significance — be- 
comes, by the art of " appearing and disappear- 



The Lancelet (Amphioxus), the supposed earli- 
est type of vertebrate animal, and, according to 
Haeckel, the ancestor of man. The figure is a sec- 
tion enlarged to twice the natural size. 



Fig. i. 



a, mouth ; 

b, anus; 

c, gill- opening; 

d, gill; 

e, stomach ; 
/, liver; 

g, intestine ; 
h, gill-cavity; 

?', notochord, or rudimentary back-bone ; 
k, I, m, ft, o, arteries and veins. 



$ 



63 



64 FACTS AND FANCIES 

ing," a rudimentary backbone, and enables us 
at once to recognize in the young ascidian an 
embryo man. 

A second method characteristic of the book, 
and furnishing, indeed, the main basis of its ar- 
gument, is that of considering analogous pro- 
cesses as identical, without regard to the differ- 
ence of the conditions under which they may be 
carried on. The great leading use of this argu- 
ment is in inducing us to regard the develop- 
ment of the individual animal as the precise 
equivalent of the series of changes by which 
the species was developed in the course of ge- 
ological time. These two kinds of develop- 
ment are distinguished by appropriate names. 
Ontogenesis is the embryonic development of 
the individual animal, and is, of course, a short 
process, depending on the production of a germ 
by a parent animal or parent pair, and the fur- 
ther growth of this germ in connection more or 
less with the parent or with provision made by 
it. This is, of course, a fact open to observa- 
tion and study, though some of its processes 
are mysterious and yet involved in doubt and 
uncertainty. Phylogenesis is the supposed de- 
velopment of a species in the course of geo- 
logical time and by the intervention of long 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 65 

series of species, each in its time distinct and 
composed of individuals each going regularly 
through a genetic circle of its own. 

The latter is a process not open to observa- 
tion within the time at our command — purely 
hypothetical, therefore, and of which the possi- 
bility remains to be proved ; while the causes 
on which it must depend are necessarily alto- 
gether different from those at work in onto- 
genesis, and the conditions of a long series of 
different kinds of animals, each perfect in its 
kind, are equally dissimilar from those of an 
animal passing through the regular stages from 
infancy to maturity. The similarity, in some 
important respects, of ontogenesis to phylo- 
genesis was inevitable, provided that animals 
were to be of different grades of complexity, 
since the development of the individual must 
necessarily be from a more simple to a more 
complex condition. On any hypothesis, the 
parallelism between embryological facts and 
the history of animals in geological time affords 
many interesting and important coincidences. 
Yet it is perfectly obvious that the causes and 
the conditions of these two successions cannot 
have been the same. Further, when we con- 
sider that the embryo-cell which develops into 

6* 



66 FACTS AND FANCIES 

one animal must necessarily be originally dis- 
tinct in its properties from that which develops 
into another kind of animal, even though no 
obvious difference appears to us, we have no 
ground for supposing that the early stages of 
all animals are alike ; and when we rigorously 
compare the development of any animal what- 
ever with the successive appearance of animals 
of the same or similar groups in geological 
time, we find many things which do not cor- 
respond — not merely in the want of links 
which we might expect to find, but in the more 
significant appearance, prematurely or inoppor- 
tunely, of forms which we would not anticipate. 
Yet the main argument of Haeckel's book is 
the quiet assumption that anything found to 
occur in ontogenetic development must also 
have occurred in phylogenesis, while manifest 
difficulties are got rid of by assuming atavisms 
and abnormalities. 

A third characteristic of the method of the 
book is the use of certain terms in peculiar 
senses, and as implying certain causes which 
are taken for granted, though their efficacy and 
their mode of operation are unknown. The 
chief of the terms so employed are " heredity " 
and " adaptation." "Heredity" is usually un- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 6? 

derstood as expressing the power of permanent 
transmission of characters from parents to off- 
spring, and in this aspect it expresses the con- 
stancy of specific forms ; but, as used by 
Haeckel, it means the transmission by a parent 
of any exceptional characters which the individ- 
ual may have accidentally assumed. "Adapta- 
tion " has usually been supposed to mean the 
fitting of animals for their place in nature, 
however that came about ; as used by Haeckel, 
it imports the power of the individual animal 
to adapt itself to changed conditions and to 
transmit these changes to its offspring. Thus 
in this philosophy the rule is made the excep- 
tion and the exception the rule by a skilful use 
of familiar terms in new senses ; and heredity 
and adaptation are constantly paraded as if 
they were two potent divinities employed in 
constantly changing and improving the face 
of nature. 

It is scarcely too much to say that the conclu- 
sions of the book are reached almost solely by 
the application of the above-mentioned peculiar 
modes of reasoning to the vast store of facts 
at command of the author, and that the reader 
who would test these conclusions by the ordi- 
nary methods of judgment must be constantly 



68 FACTS AND FANCIES 

on his guard. Still, it is not necessary to 
believe that Haeckel is an intentional deceiver. 
Such fallacies are those which are especially 
fitted to mislead enthusiastic specialists, to be 
identified by them with proved results of science, 
and to be held in an intolerant and dogmatic 
spirit. * 

Having thus noticed Haeckel's assumptions 
and his methods, we may next shortly consider 
the manner in which he proceeds to work out 
the phylogeny of man. Here he pursues a 
purely physiological method, only occasionally 
and slightly referring to geological facts. He 
takes as a first principle the law long ago form- 
ulated by Hunter, Omne vivum ex ovo — a law 
which modern research has amply confirmed, 
showing that every animal, however complex, 
can be traced back to an Qgg, which in its sim- 
plest state is no more than a single cell, though 
this cell requires to be fertilized by the addition 
of the contents of another dissimilar cell, pro- 
duced either in another organ of the same in- 
dividual or in a distinct individual. This pro- 
cess of fertilization Haeckel seems to regard as 
unnecessary in the lowest forms of life ; but, 
though there are some simple animals in which 
it has not been recognized, analogy would lead 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 69 

us to believe that in some form it is necessary 
in all. Haeckel's monistic view, however, re- 
quires that in the lowest forms it should be ab- 
sent and should have originated spontaneously, 
though how does not seem to be very clear, as 
the explanation given of it by him amounts to 
little more than the statement that it must have 
occurred. Still, as a " dualistic " process it is 
very significant with reference to the monistic 
theory. 

Much space is, of course, devoted to the tra- 
cing of the special development or ontogenesis 
of man, and to the illustration of the fact that 
in the earlier stages of this development the 
human embryo is scarcely distinguishable from 
that of lower animals. We may, indeed, affirm 
that all animals start from cells which, in so far 
as we can see, are similar to each other, yet 
which must include potentially the various prop- 
erties of the animals which spring from them. 
As we trace them onward in their development, 
we see these differences manifesting themselves. 
At first all pass, according to Haeckel, through a 
stage which he calls the " gastrula," in which the 
whole body is represented by a sort of sac, the 
cavity of which is the stomach and the walls of 
which consist of two layers of cells. It should 



/O FACTS A XI) FANCIES 

be stated, however, that many eminent natural- 
ists dissent from this view, and maintain that 
even in the earliest stages material differences 
can be observed. In this they are probably right, 
as even Haeckel has to admit some decree of 
divergence from this all-embracing " o-astraea " 
theory. Admitting, however, that such early 
similarity exists within certain limits, we find 
that, as the embryo advances, it speedily begins 
to indicate whether it is to be a coral-animal, a 
snail, a worm, or a fish. Consequently, the 
physiologist who wishes to trace the resem- 
blances leading to mammals and to man has to 
lop off one by one the several branches which 
lead in other directions, and to follow that which 
conducts by the most direct course .to the type 
which he has in view. In this way Haeckel can 
show that the embryo Homo sapiens is in succes- 
sive stages so like to the young of the fish, the 
reptile, the bird, and the ordinary quadruped 
that he can produce for comparison figures 
in which the cursory observer can detect scarce- 
ly any difference. 

All this has long been known, and has been 
regarded as a wonderful evidence of the ho- 
mology or unity of plan which pervades nature, 
and as constituting man the archetype of the 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 7 1 

animal kingdom — the highest realization of a plan 
previously sketched by the Creator in many 
ruder and humbler forms. It also teaches 
that it is not so much in the mere bodily 
organism that we are to look for the distin- 
guishing characters of humanity as in the high- 
er rational and moral nature. 

But Haeckel, like other evolutionists of the 
monistic and agnostic schools, goes far beyond 
this. The ontogeny, on the evidence of anal- 
ogy, as already explained, is nothing less than 
a miniature representation of the phylogeny. 
Man must in the long ages of geological time 
have arisen from a monad, just as the individ- 
ual man has in his life-history arisen from an 
embryo-cell, and the several stages through 
which the individual passes must be parallel 
to those in the history of the race. True, the 
supposed monad must have been wanting in all 
the conditions of origin, sexual fertilization, pa- 
rental influence, and surroundings. There is 
no perceptible relation of cause and effect, any 
more than between the rotation of a carriage- 
wheel and that of the earth on its axis. The 
analogy might prompt to inquiries as to com- 
mon laws and similarities of operation, but it 
proves nothing as to causation. 



72 FACTS AND FANCIES 

In default of such proof, Haeckel favors us 
with another analogy, derived from the science 
of language. All the Indo-European lan- 
guages are believed to be descended from 
a common ancestral tongue, and this is anal- 
ogous to the descent of all animals from one 
primitive species. But unfortunately the lan- 
guages in question are the expressions of the 
voice and the thought of one and the same 
species. The individuals using them are known 
historically to have descended by ordinary gen- 
eration from a common source, and the con- 
necting-links of the various dialects are un- 
broken. The analogy fails altogether in the 
case of species succeeding each other in geo- 
logical time, unless the very thing to be proved 
is taken for granted in the outset. 

The actual proof that a basis exists in nature 
for the doctrine of evolution founded on these 
analogies, might be threefold. First. There 
might be changes of the nature of phylogenesis 
going on under our own observation, and even 
a very few of these would be sufficient to give 
some show of probability. Elaborate attempts 
have been made to show that variations, as 
existing in the more variable of our domes- 
ticated species, lead in the direction of such 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. ?$ 

changes ; but the results have been unsatisfac- 
tory, and our author scarcely condescends to 
notice this line of proof. He evidently regards 
the time over which human history has extended 
as too short to admit of this kind of demon- 
stration. Secondly. There might be in the exist- 
ing system of nature such a close connection 
or continuous chain of species as might at least 
strengthen the argument from analogy ; and 
undoubtedly there are many groups of closely 
allied species, or of races confounded with true 
specific types, which it might not be unreason- 
able to suppose of common origin. These are, 
however, scattered widely apart ; and the con- 
trary fact of extensive gaps in the series is so 
frequent, that Haeckel is constantly under the 
necessity of supposing that multitudes of 
species, and even of larger groups, have 
perished just where it is most important to 
his conclusion that they should have remained. 
This is, of course, unfortunate for the theory ; 
but then, as Haeckel often remarks, " we must 
suppose " that the missing links once existed. 
But, thirdly, these gaps which now unhappily 
exist may be filled up by fossil animals ; and 
if in the successive geological periods we could 
trace the actual phylogeny of even a few groups 

7 



74 FACTS AND FANCIES 

of living creatures, we might have the demon- 
stration desired. But here again the gaps are 
so frequent and so serious that Haeckel scarcely 
attempts to use this argument further than by 
giving a short and somewhat imperfect sum- 
mary of the geological succession in the begin- 
ning of his second volume. In this he attempts 
to give a continuous series of the ancestors of 
man as developed in geological time ; but, 
of twenty-one groups which he arranges in 
order from the beginning of the Laurentian 
to the modern period, at least ten are not 
known at all as fossils, and others do not 
belong, so far as known, to the ages to which 
he assigns them. This necessity of manufac- 
turing facts does not speak well for the testi- 
mony of geology to the supposed phylogeny 
of man. 

In point of fact, it cannot be disguised that, 
though it is possible to pick out some series 
of animal forms, like the horses and camels 
referred to by some palaeontologists, which 
simulate a genetic order, the general testimony 
of palaeontology is, on the whole, adverse to 
the ordinary theories of evolution, whether 
applied to the vegetable or to the animal 
kingdom. This the writer has elsewhere en- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 75 

deavored to show ; ' but he may refer here to 
the labors of Barrande, perhaps unrivalled in 
extent and accuracy, which show that in the 
leading forms of life in the older geological 
formations the succession is not such as to 
correspond with any of the received theo- 
ries of derivation.* Even evolutionists, when 
sufficiently candid, admit their case not proven 
by geological evidence. Gaudry, one of the 
best authorities on the Tertiary mammalia, 
admits the impossibility of suggesting any 
possible derivation for some of the leading 
groups, and Saporta, Mivart, ancj Le Conte 
fall back on periods of rapid or paroxysmal 
evolution scarcely differing from the idea of 
creation by law, or mediate creation, as it has 
been termed. 

Thus the utmost value which can be attached 
to Haeckel's argument from analogy would be 
that it suggests a possibility that the processes 
which we see carried on in the evolution of the 
individual may, in the laws which regulate them, 
be connected in some way more or less close 
with those creative processes which on the 

* Those who wish to understand the real bearings of palaeontology 
on evolution should study Barrande's Memoirs on the Silurian Trilo- 
bites, Cephalopods, and Brachiopods. 



7& FACTS AND FANCIES 

wider field of geological time have been con- 
cerned in the production of the multitudinous 
forms of animal life. That Haeckel's philos- 
ophy goes but a very little way toward any 
understanding of such relations, and that our 
present information, even within the more lim- 
ited scope of biological science, is too meagre 
to permit of safe generalization, will appear 
from the consideration of a few facts taken 
here and there from the multitude employed 
by him to illustrate the monistic theory. 

When we are told that a moner or an embryo- 
cell is the early stage of all animals alike, we 
naturally ask, Is it meant that all these cells 
are really similar, or is it only that they appear 
similar to us, and may actually be as profoundly 
unlike as the animals which they are destined 
to produce ? To make this question more 
plain, let us take the case as formally stated : 
" From the weighty fact that the egg of the hu- 
man being, like the egg of all other animals, is 
a simple cell, it may be quite certainly inferred 
that a one-celled parent-form once existed, from 
which all the many-celled animals, man included, 
developed." 

Now, let us suppose that we have under our 
microscope a one-celled animalcule quite as 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. JJ 

simple in structure as our supposed ancestor. 
Along with this we may have on the same slide 
another cell, which is the embryo of a worm, 
and a third, which is the embryo of a man. All 
these, according to the hypothesis, are similar 
in appearance ; so that we can by no means 
guess which is destined to continue always an 
animalcule, or which will become a worm or 
may develop into a poet or a philosopher. Is 
it meant that the things are actually alike or 
only apparently so ? If they are really alike, 
then their destinies must depend on external 
circumstances. Put either of them into a pond, 
and it will remain a monad. Put either of them 
into the ovary of a complex animal, and it will 
develop into the likeness of that animal. But 
such similarity is altogether improbable, and it 
would destroy the argument of the evolution- 
ist. In this case he would be hopelessly shut 
up to the conclusion that " hens were before 
eggs ;" and Haeckel elsewhere informs us that 
the exactly opposite view is necessarily that of 
the monistic evolutionist. Thus, though it may 
often be convenient to speak of these three 
kinds of cells as if they were perfectly similar, 
the method of " disappearance " has immediate- 
ly to be resorted to, and they are shown to be, in 

7* 



'/& FACTS A ND FANCIES 

fact, quite dissimilar. There is, indeed, the best 
ground to suppose that the one-celled animals 
and the embryo-cells referred to, have little in 
common except their general form. We know 
that the most minute cell must include a suf- 
ficient number of molecules of protoplasm to 
admit of great varieties of possible arrange- 
ment, and that these may be connected with 
most varied possibilities as to the action of 
forces. Further, the embryo-cell which is pro- 
duced by a particular kind of animal, and whose 
development results in the reproduction of a 
similar animal, must contain potentially the 
parts and structures which are evolved from 
it ; and fact shows that this may be affirmed of 
both the embryo and the sperm-cells where 
there are two sexes. Therefore it is in the 
highest degree probable that the eggs of a 
worm and those of man, though possibly alike 
to our coarse methods of investigation, are as 
dissimilar as the animals that result from them. 
If so, the " egg may be before the hen ;" but it 
is as difficult to imagine the spontaneous pro- 
duction of the egg which is potentially the hen 
as of the hen itself. Thus the similarity of the 
eggs and early embryos of animals of different 
grades is apparent only ; and this fact, which 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 79 

embodies a great, and perhaps insoluble, mys- 
tery, invalidates the whole of Haeckel's reason- 
ing- on the alleo-ed resemblances of different 

o o 

kinds of animals in their early stages. 

A second difficulty arises from the fact that 
the simple embryo- cell of any of the higher 
animals rapidly produces various kinds of spe- 
cialized cells different in structure and appear- 
ance and capable of performing different func- 
tions, whereas in the lower forms of life such 
cells may remain simple or may merely produce 
several similar cells little or not at all differ- 
entiated. This objection, whenever it occurs, 
Haeckel endeavors to turn by the assertion 
that a complex animal is merely an aggregate 
of independent cells, each of which is a sort of 
individual. He thus tries to break up the in- 
tegrity of the complex organism and to reduce 
it to a mere swarm of monads. He compares 
the cells of an organism to the " individuals 
of a savage community," who, at first separate 
and all alike in their habits and occupations, at 
length organize themselves into a community 
and assume different avocations. Single cells, 
he says, at first were alike, and each performed 
the same simple offices of all the others. "At 
a later period isolated cells gathered into com- 



8o facts and fancies 

munities ; groups of simple cells which had 
arisen from the continued division of a single 
cell remained together, and now began grad- 
ually to perform different offices of life." 

But this is a mere vague analogy. It does 
not represent anything actually occurring in 
nature, except in the case of an embryo pro- 
duced by some animal which already shows all 
the tissues which its embryo is destined to re- 
produce. Thus it establishes no probability 
of the evolution of complex tissues from sim- 
ple cells, and leaves altogether unexplained that 
wonderful process by which the embryo-cell 
not only divides into many cells, but becomes 
developed into all the variety of dissimilar tis- 
sues evolved from the homogeneous e££ ■ but 
evolved from it, as we naturally suppose, be- 
cause of the fact that the egg represents po- 
tentially all these tissues as existing previously 
in the parent organism. 

But if we are content to waive these objec- 
tions or to accept the solutions given of them 
by the " appearance-and-disappearance " argu- 
ment, we still find that the phylogeny, unlike 
the ontogenesis, is full of wide gaps only to be 
passed per saltum or to be accounted for by the 
disappearance of a vast number of connecting- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 8 1 

links. Of course, it is easy to suppose that 
these intermediate forms have been lost through 
time and accident, but why this has happened 
to some rather than to others cannot be ex- 
plained. In the phylogeny of man, for exam- 
ple, what a vast hiatus yawns between the as- 
cidian and the lancelet, and another between 
the lancelet and the lamprey ! It is true that 
the missing links may have consisted of animals 
little likely to be preserved as fossils ; but why, 
if they ever existed, do not some of them re- 
main in the modern seas ? Again, when we 
have so many species of apes and so many 
races of men, why can we find no trace, recent 
or fossil, of that " missing link " which we are 
told must have existed, the "ape-like men," 
known to Haeckel as the "Alali," or speech- 
less men ? 

A further question which should receive con- 
sideration from the monist school is that very 
serious one, Why, if all is " mechanical " in the 
development and actions of living beings, should 
there be any progress whatever ? Ordinary peo- 
ple fail to understand why a world of mere dead 
matter should not go on to all eternity obeying 
physical and chemical laws without developing 
life ; or why, if some low form of life were intro- 



82 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

duced capable of reproducing simple one-celled 
organisms, it should not go on doing so. 

Further, even if some chance deviations should 
occur, we fail to perceive why these should go on 
in a definite manner producing not only the most 
complex machines, but many kinds of such ma- 
chines — on different plans, but each perfect in its 
way. Haeckel is never weary of telling us that 
to monists organisms are mere machines. Even 
his own mental work is merely the grinding of 
a cerebral machine. But he seems not to per- 
ceive that to such a philosophy the homely ar- 
gument which Paley derived from the structure 
of a watch would be fatal : " The question is 
whether machines (which monists consider all 
animals to be, including themselves) infinitely 
more complicated than watches could come into 
existence without design somewhere"* — that is, 
by mere chance. Common sense is not likely 
to admit that this is possible. 

The difficulties above referred to relate to the 
introduction of life and of new species on the 
monistic view. Others might be referred to in 
connection with the production of new organs. 
An illustration is afforded, among others, by the 
discussion of the introduction of the five fingers 

* Beckett, Origin of the Laws of' Nature. 



Fig. 2. 




Impression of five fingers and five toes of an Amphibian of the 
Lower Carboniferous Age, from the lowest Carboniferous beds in 
Nova Scotia— an evidence of the fact that the number five was 
already selected for the hands and feet of the earli-est known land 
vertebrates, and that the decimal system of notation, with all that 
it involves to man, was determined in the Paleozoic Age. The upper 
figure natural size, the lower reduced. 

83 



84 FACTS AN!) FANCIES 

and toes of man, which appear to descend to us 
unchanged from the amphibians or batrachians 
of the Carboniferous period. In this ancient 
age of the earth's geological history, feet with 
five toes appear in numerous species of rep- 
tilians of various grades (Fig. 2). They are 
preceded by no other vertebrates than fishes, 
and these have numerous fin-rays instead of 
toes. There are no properly transitional forms 
either fossil or recent. How were the five-fin- 
gered limbs acquired in this abrupt way ? Why 
were they five rather than any other number ? 
Why, when once introduced, have they continued 
unchanged up to the present day? Haeckel's 
answer is a curious example of his method : 
"The great significance of the five digits de- 
pends on the fact that this number has been 
transmitted from the Amphibia to all higher 
vertebrates. It would be impossible to dis- 
cover any reason why in the lowest Amphibia, 
as well as in reptiles and in higher vertebrates 
up to man, there should always originally be 
five digits on each of the anterior and posterior 
limbs, if we denied that heredity from a com- 
mon five-fingered parent-form is the efficient 
cause of this phenomenon ; heredity can alone 
account for it. In many Amphibia certainly, as 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 85 

well as in many higher vertebrates, we find less 
than five digits. But in all these cases it can 
be shown that separate digits have retrograded, 
and have finally been completely lost. The 
causes which affected the development of the 
five-fingered foot of the higher vertebrates in 
this amphibian form from the many-fingered 
foot (or properly fin), must certainly be found 
in the adaptation to the totally altered functions 
which the limbs had to discharge during the 
transition from an exclusively aquatic life to one 
which was partially terrestrial. While the many- 
fingered fins of the fish had previously served 
almost exclusively to propel the body through 
the water, they had now also to afford support 
to the animal when creeping on the land. This 
effected a modification both of the skeleton and 
of the muscles of the limbs. The number of fin- 
rays was gradually lessened, and was finally re- 
duced to five. These five remaining rays were, 
however, developed more vigorously. The soft 
cartilaginous rays became hard bones. The rest 
of the skeleton also became considerably more 
firm. The movements of the body became not 
only more vigorous, but also more varied ;" and 
•the paragraph proceeds to state other ameliora- 
tions of muscular and nervous system supposed 



86 FACTS AND FANCIES 

to be related to or caused by the improvement 
of the limbs. 

It will be observed that in the above extract, 
under the formula " the causes which affected 
the development of the five-fingered foot . . . 
must certainly be found," all that other men 
would regard as demanding proof is quietly 
assumed, and the animal grows before our 
eyes from a fish to a reptile as under the 
wand of a conjurer. Further, the transmission 
of the five toes is attributed to heredity or un- 
changed reproduction, but this, of course, gives 
no explanation of the original formation of the 
structure, nor of the causes which prevented 
heredity from applying to the fishes which 
became amphibians and acquired fivQ toes, 
or to the amphibians which faithfully trans- 
mitted their five toes, but not their other 
characteristics. 

It is perhaps scarcely profitable to follow 
further the criticism of this extraordinary 
book. It may be necessary, however, to re- 
peat that it contains clear, and in the main 
accurate, sketches of the embryology of a 
number of animals, only slightly colored by 
the tendency to minimize differences. It may 
also be necessary to say that in criticising 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 87 

Haeckel we take him on his own ground — that 
of a monist — and have no special reference 
to those many phases which the philosophy 
of evolution assumes in the minds of other 
naturalists, many of whom accept it only par- 
tially or as a form of mediate creation more or 
less reconcilable with theism. To these more 
moderate views no reference has been made, 
though there can be no doubt that many of 
them are quite as assailable as the position 
of Haeckel in point of argument. It may 
also be observed that Haeckel's argument is 
almost exclusively biological and confined to 
the animal kingdom, and to the special line 
of descent attributed to man. The monistic 
hypothesis becomes, as already stated, still 
less tenable when tested by the facts of palae- 
ontology. Hence most of the palaeontologists 
who favor evolution appear to shrink from 
the extreme position of Haeckel. Gaudry, 
one of the ablest of this school, in his recent 
work on the development of the Mammalia, 
candidly admits the multitude of facts for 
which . derivation will not account, and per- 
ceives in the grand succession of animals in 
time the evidence of a wise and far-reaching 
creative plan, concluding with the words : " We 



88 FACTS AND FANCIES 

may still leave out of the question the pro- 
cesses by which the Author of the world has 
produced the changes of which palaeontology 
presents the picture." In like manner, the 
Count de Saporta in his Woidd of Plants 
closes his summary of the periods of vegeta- 
tion with the words : " But if we ascend from 
one phenomenon to another, beyond the sphere 
of contingent and changeable appearance, we 
find ourselves arrested by a Being unchange- 
able and supreme, the first expression and 
absolute cause of all existence, in whom diver- 
sity unites with unity, an eternal problem, in- 
soluble to science, but ever present to the 
human consciousness. Here we reach the 
true source of the idea of religion, and there 
presents itself distinctly to the mind that con- 
ception to which we apply instinctively the 
name of God." 

Thus these evolutionists, like many others 
in this country and in England, find a modus 
vive?idi between evolution and theism. They 
have committed themselves to an interpreta- 
tion of nature which may prove fanciful and 
evanescent, and which certainly up to this 
time remains an hypothesis, ingenious and 
captivating, but not fortified by the evidence 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 89 

of facts. But in doing so they are not pre- 
pared to accept the purely mechanical creed 
of the monist, or to separate themselves from 
those ideas of morality, of religion, and of 
sonship to God which have hitherto been the 
brightest gems in the crown of man as the 
lord of this lower world. Whether they can 
maintain this position against the monists, and 
whether they will be able in the end to retain 
any practical form of religion along with the 
doctrine of the derivation of man from the 
lower animals, remains to be seen. Possibly 
before these questions come to a final issue 
the philosophy of evolution may itself have 
been " modified " or have given place to some 
new phase of thought. 

One curious point in this connection, to which 
little attention has been given by evolutionists, 
is that to which Herbert Spencer has given the 
name of " direct equilibration," though he is suf- 
ficiently wise not to invite too much attention 
to it. This is the balance of parts and forces 
within the organism itself. The organism is a 
complex machine ; and if its parts have been 
put together by chance and are drifting onward 
in the path of evolution, there must of neces- 
sity be a continual "struggle going on between 

8* 



90 FACTS AND FANCIES 

the different organs and functions, each tending 
to swallow up the others and each struggling 
for its own existence. This resolution of the 
body of each animal into a house divided 
against itself is at first sight so revolting to 
common sense and right feeling that few like 
to contemplate it. Roux and other recent 
writers, however, especially in Germany, have 
brought it into prominence, and it is no doubt 
a necessary consequence of the evolutionary 
idea, though altogether at variance with the 
theory of intelligent design, which supposes 
the animal machine put together with care 
and for a purpose, and properly adjusted in 
all its parts. On the hypothesis of evolution, 
the animal thus ceases to be, in the proper 
sense of the term, even a machine, and be- 
comes a mere mass of conflicting parts depend- 
ing for any constancy they may have on a 
chance balancing of hostile forces, without any 
compelling power to bring them together at 
first, or any means to bind them to joint action 
in the system. The more such a doctrine is 
considered, the more difficult does it *seem to 
believe in the possibility of its truth. Evolu- 
tion has already reduced the cosmos into chaos, 
the harmony of the universe into discord ; but 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 9 1 

it seems past belief to introduce this into the 
microcosm itself, and to see nothing in its ex- 
quisite adjustments except the momentary equi- 
librium of a well-balanced fight. Geological 
history also adds to the absurdity of such a 
view by showing the marvellous permanence 
of many forms of life which have continued to 
perpetuate themselves through almost immeas- 
urable ages without material changes, thus 
proving unanswerably the perfect adjustment 
of their parts. 

Viewed rightly, this direct equilibration of the 
parts of the animal seems to throw the greatest 
possible doubt on the capacity of any form of 
evolution to produce new species. It is cer- 
tain, from the facts collected by Mr. Darwin 
himself in his work on animals under domes- 
tication, that when man disturbs the balance of 
any organism by changing in any way the re- 
lations of its parts, he introduces elements of 
instability and weakness, which, despite the ef- 
forts of nature to correct the evils resulting, 
speedily lead to degeneracy, infertility, and ex- 
tinction. Mr. T. Warren O'Neil of Philadel- 
phia has recently argued this point with much 
ability* and has shown, on the testimony of 

* .Refutation of Darwinism, Philadelphia, 1880. 



92 FACTS AND FANCIES 

Darwin's facts, that unless " natural selection " 
is a much more skilful breeder than man, and 
possesses some secrets not yet discovered by 
us, the effects of this imaginary power would 
lead, not to the production of new species, but 
merely to the extinction of those already ex- 
isting. In short, all the evidence goes to show 
that — so beautifully balanced are the parts of 
the organism — any excess or deficiency in any 
of them, when artificially or accidentally intro- 
duced, brings in elements not only of instabil- 
ity, but of decay and destruction. This subject 
is deserving of a more full treatment than it 
can receive here, but enough has been said to 
show that in this evolutionists have unwittingly 
furnished us with a new confirmation of the 
theory of intelligent design. 

In some places there are in Haeckel's book 
touches of a grim humor which are not without 
interest, as showing the subjective side of the 
monistic theory and illustrating the attitude 
of its professors to things held sacred by other 
men. For example, the following is the intro- 
duction to the chapter headed " From the Prim- 
itive Worm to the Skulled Animal," and which 
has for its motto the lines of Goethe be- 
ginning ; 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 93 

" Not like the gods am I ! full well I know ; 
But like the worms which in the dust must go." 

" Both in prose and poetry man is very often 
compared to a worm ; ' a miserable worm,' ' a 
poor worm,' are common and almost compas- 
sionate phrases. If we cannot detect any deep 
phylogenetic reference in this zoological met- 
aphor, we might at least safely assert that it 
contains an unconscious comparison with a 
low condition of animal development which 
is interesting in its bearing on the pedigree 
of the human race." 

If Haeckel were well read in Scripture, he 
might have quoted here the melancholy con- 
fession of the man of Uz : " I have said to the 
worm, Thou art my mother and my sister." 
But, though Job, like the German professor, 
could humbly say to the worm, " Thou art my 
mother," he could still hold fast his integrity 
and believe in the fatherhood of God. 

The moral bearing of monism is further 
illustrated by the following extract, which 
refers to a more advanced step of the evolu- 
tion — that from the ape to man — and which 
shows the honest pride of the worthy pro- 
fessor in his humble parentage : " Just as most 
people prefer to trace their pedigree from a 



94 FACTS AND FANCIES 

decayed baron, or if possible from a celebrated 
prince, rather than from an unknown humble 
peasant, so they prefer seeing the progenitor 
of the human race in an Adam degraded by 
the fall, rather than in an ape capable of higher 
development and progress. It is a matter of 
taste, and such genealogical preferences do 
not, therefore, admit of discussion. It is more 
to my individual taste to be the more highly- 
developed descendant of an ape, who in the 
struggle for existence had developed pro- 
gressively from lower mammals as they from 
still lower vertebrates, than the degraded de- 
scendant of an Adam, Godlike but debased 
by the fall, who was formed from a clod of 
earth, and of an Eve created from a rib of 
Adam. As regards the celebrated 'rib,' I must 
here expressly add, as a supplement to the 
history of the development of the skeleton, 
that the number of ribs is the same in man 
and in woman.* In the latter as well as in 
the former the ribs originate from the skin- 
fibrous layer, and are to be regarded phyloge- 
netically as lower or ventral vertebrae." f 

* It was scarcely necessary to refer to this childish objection unless 
the individual skeleton of Adam had been in question, 
-j- Rather, " vertebral arches." 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 95 

There is no accounting for tastes, yet we 
may be pardoned for retaining some prefer- 
ence for the first link of the old Jewish gene- 
alogical table : " Which was the son of Adam, 
which was the son of God." As to the " de- 
basement" of the fall, it is to be feared that 
the aboriginal ape would object to bearing the 
blame of existing human iniquities as having 
arisen from any improvement in his nature 
and habits ; and it is scarcely fair to speak of 
Adam as " formed from a clod of earth," which 
is not precisely in accordance with the record. 
As to the " rib," which seems so offensive to 
Haeckel, one would have thought that he 
would, as an evolutionist, have had some fel- 
low-feeling in this with the writer of Genesis. 
The origin of sexes is one of the acknow- 
ledged difficulties of the hypothesis, and, using 
his method, we might surely "assume," or even 
" confidently assert," the possibility that, in some 
early stage of the development, the unfinished 
vertebral arches of the " skin-fibrous layer " 
might have produced a new individual by a 
process of budding or gemmation. Quite as 
remarkable suppositions are contained in some 
parts of his own volumes, without any special 
divine power for rendering them practicable. 



g6 FACTS AND FANCIES 

Further, if only an individual man originated 
in the first instance, and if he were not pro- 
vided with a suitable spouse, he might have 
intermarried with the unimproved anthropoids, 
and the results of the evolution would have 
been lost. Such considerations should have 
weighed with Haeckel in inducing him to speak 
more respectfully of Adam's rib, especially in 
view of the fact that in dealing with the hard 
question of human origin the author of Genesis 
had not the benefit of the researches of Baer 
and Haeckel. He had, no doubt, the advantage 
of a firm faith in the reality of that Creative 
Will which the monistic prophets of the nine- 
teenth century have banished from their calcu- 
lations. Were Haeckel not a monist, he might 
also be reminded of that grand doctrine of the 
lordship and superiority of man based on the 
fact that there was no " help meet for him ;" 
and the foundation of the most sacred bond 
of human society on the saying of the first 
man : "This is now bone of my bones, and flesh 
of my flesh." But monists probably attach 
little value to such ideas. 

It may be proper to add here that in his ref- 
erences to Adam, Haeckel betrays a weakness 
not unusual with his school, in putting a false 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 97 

gloss on the old record of Genesis. The state- 
ment that man was formed from the dust of 
the ground implies no more than the produc- 
tion of his body from the common materials 
employed in the construction of other animals ; 
this also in contradistinction from the higher na- 
ture derived from the inbreathing or inspiration 
of God. The precise nature of the method by 
which man was made or created is not stated by 
the author of Genesis. Further, it would have 
been as easy for Divine Power to create a pair 
as an individual. If this was not done, and if 
after the lesson of superiority taught by the in- 
spection of lower animals, and the lesson of 
language taught by naming them, the first man 
in his " deep sleep " is conscious of the removal 
of a portion of his own flesh, and then on awak- 
ing has the woman "brought" to him, all this is 
to teach a lesson not to be otherwise learned. 
The Mosaic record is thus perfectly consistent 
with itself and with its own doctrine of creation 
by Almighty Power. 

I have quoted the above passages as exam- 
ples of the more jocose vein of the Jena phys- 
iologist ; but they constitute also a serious rev- 
elation of the influence of his philosophy on his 
own mind and heart, in lowering both to a cold, 



98 FACTS AND FANCIES 

mechanical, and unsympathetic view of man and 
nature. This is especially serious when we re- 
member how earnestly in a recent address he 
advocated the teaching of the methods and re- 
sults of this book, as those which, in the present 
state of knowledge, should supersede the Bible 
in our schools. We may well say, with his great 
opponent on that occasion, that if such doctrines 
should be proved to be true, the teaching of 
them might become a necessity, but one that 
would bring us face to face with the darkest and 
most dangerous moral problem that has ever 
beset humanity ; and that so long as they re- 
main unproved it is both unwise and criminal 
to propagate them among the mass of men 
as conclusions which have been demonstrated 
by science. 

In conclusion, we may notice shortly a few 
of the consequences of the monistic evolution 
as held by Haeckel and others. Doctrines are 
perhaps not to be judged by the consequences 
— at least, by the immediate consequences — of 
their acceptance. Yet if their logical conse- 
quences are such as to introduce confusion into 
our higher ideas and sentiments, we have rea- 
son to hesitate as to their adoption — if on no 
other ground, because we ourselves are a part 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 99 

of nature and should be in harmony with any 
true explanation of it. 

We may affirm in this connection that agnos- 
tic evolution reduces all our science to mere 
evanescent anthropomorphic fancies ; so that, 
like a parasite, it first supports itself on the 
strength and substance of science, and then 
strangles it to death. Physical science is a 
product of our thinking as to external things. 
If, therefore, the thinking brain and the ex- 
ternal nature which it studies are both of them 
the fortuitous products of blind tendencies in a 
process of continuous flux and vicissitude, our 
science can embody no elements of eternal 
truth nor any conceptions as to the plans of 
a higher creative reason. In that case it is ab- 
solutely worthless, and a pure waste of time 
and energy, except in so far as it may yield any 
temporary material advantages. 

Further, the agnostic evolution thus leaves 
us as orphans in the midst of a cold and insen- 
sate nature. We are no longer dwellers in our 
Father's house, beautiful and fitted for us, but 
are thrown into the midst of a hideous conflict 
of dead forces, in which we must finally perish 
and be annihilated. In a struggle so hopeless 
it is a mere mockery to tell us that in millions 



IOO FACTS AND FANCIES 

of years something better may come out of it, 
for we know that this will be of no avail to us, 
and we feel that it is impossible. Thus the 
agnostic philosophy, if it be once accepted as 
true, seriously raises the question whether life 
is worth living. 

But if worth living, then it must be for the 
immediate and selfish gratification of our de- 
sires and passions ; and since we are deprived 
of God and conscience, and right and wrong, 
and future reward or punishment, and all men 
are- alike in this position, there can be nothing 
left for us but to rend and fight with our fellows 
for such share of good as may fall to us in the 
deadly struggle, that we may reach such happi- 
ness as may be possible for us in such an 
existence, ere we drift into nonenity. Here, 
again, we are told that the struggle will some 
time lead to the survival of the fittest, and that 
the fittest may inaugurate a new and better 
reign of peace. But the world has already 
lasted countless ages without arriving at this 
result. It cannot concern me individually, any 
more than what happens to-day concerns the 
extinct ichthyosaur or the megatherium. All 
that is left for me is to " eat and drink, for 
to-morrow I die." 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 101 

If any one thinks that this is an exaggerated 
picture of the effects of agnostic evolution as 
applied to man, I may refer him to the study 
of Herbert Spencer's recent work The Data 
of Ethics, which has contributed very much to 
open the eyes of thoughtful men to the depth 
of spiritual, moral, and even social and political, 
ruin into which we shall drift under the guid- 
ance of this philosophy. In this work the data 
of ethics are reduced to the one consideration 
of what is " pleasurable " to ourselves and 
others, and it is admitted that our ideas of 
conscience, duty, and even of social obliga- 
tion, are merely fictions of temporary use un- 
til the time shall come when what is pleasurable 
to ourselves shall coincide with what is pleas- 
urable to others ; and this is to come, not out 
of the love of God and the influence of his 
Spirit, but out of the blind struggle of oppos- 
ing interests. It has been well said that this 
system of morals — if it can be dignified with 
such a name — is inferior, logically and prac- 
tically, not only to the " supernatural ethics " 
which it boastfully professes to replace, but to 
the ethics of Aristotle and Cicero, and that " it 
will not supersede revelation, nor is it likely to 
displace the old data of ethics, whether Greek, 



102 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

Roman, or English." Independently of its an- 
tagonism to theism and Christianity, it is fore- 
doomed by the common sense and the right 
feeling of even imperfect human nature. 



III. 

EVOLUTION 

AS TESTED BY 



The Records of the Rocks 



LECTURE III. 

EVOLUTION AS TESTED BY THE RECORDS OF THE 

ROCKS. 



H 



AVING discussed those vague analogies 
and fanciful pedigrees by which it has 
been attempted to drag the science of Biology 
into the service of Agnostic Evolution, we may 
now turn to another science — that of the earth 
— and inquire how far it justifies us in affirming 
the spontaneous evolution of plants and ani- 
mals in the progress of geological time. This 
subject is one which would require a lengthy 
treatise for its full development, and it cannot 
be pursued in the most satisfactory way without 
much previous knowledge of geological facts 
and principles, and of the classification of ani- 
mals and plants. On the present occasion it 
must therefore be treated in the most general 
possible manner, and with reference merely to 
the results which have been reached. There 
is the more excuse for this mode of treatment 
that, in works already published and widely 

105 



106 FACTS AND FANCIES 

circulated* I have endeavored to present its 
details in a popular form to general readers. 
Geological investigation has disclosed a great 
/ series of stratified rocks composing the crust 
\ of the earth, and formed at successive times, 
chiefly by the agency of water. These can 
be arranged in chronological order; and, so 
arranged, they constitute the physical monu- 
ments of the earth's history. We must here 
take for granted, on the testimony of geology, 
that the accumulation of this series of deposits 
has extended over a vast lapse of time, and 
that the successive formations contain remains 
of animals and plants from which we can learn 
much as to the succession of life on the earth. 
Without entering into geological details, it may 
be sufficient to present in tabular form (see p. 
107) the grand series of formations, with the 
general history of life as ascertained from them. 
In the oldest rocks known to geologists — 
those of the Eozoic time — some indications of 
the presence of life are found. Great beds of 
limestone are contained in these formations, 
vast quantities of carbon in the form of graph- 
ite, and thick beds of iron-ore. All these are 

* Story of the Earth, Origin of the World, Chain of Life in Geolog- 
ical ffitne. 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 



107 



Tabular View of Geological Periods and of Life- Epochs. 



Geological Periods. 


Animal 
Life. 


Vegetable 
Life. 


u 
. 

2 
a a 

6* 


.fW- Tertiary f Recent, 
or Modern. \ Post-Glacial. 

f Pleistocene, or Glacial. 

rr, .. Pliocene. 
Tertiary . A Miocene# 

[Eocene. 


Age of Man 
and Modern 
Mamtnals. 

Age of Extinct 

Mamtnals. 

(Earliest 

Placental 

Mammals.) 


Age of 

Angiosperms 
and Palms. 


M 
O 

N 

O ■ 

01 

H 


Cretaceous. •{ Lower,' or Neocomian. 
Jurassic . .{ggj* 

(Upper, 
Triassic . A Middle, or Muschelkalk. 
(_ Lower. 


Age of Reptiles 
and Birds. 

(Earliest 
Marsupial 
Mammals.) 


(Earliest 
Modern 
Trees.) 

Age of 

Cycads and 

Pines. 


U 

*h 
O 
N 
O 

i-l 
< 


C Upper, 
Permian . J Middle or Magnesian 
1 Limestone. 
[ Lower. 

f Upper Coal-Formation, 
y- 7 •/• Coal-Formation. 
Carboniferous j Carboniferous L i mes ton e . 

[Lower Coal-Formation. 

Erian ( Upper. 

or -j Middle. 

Devonian . . [Lower. 

Silurian J U PP er > 

' \ Lower, or Siluro-Cambrian. 

(Upper. 

Cambrian. A Middle. 

[Lower. 


(Earliest True 
Reptiles.) 

Age of 

Amphibians 
and Fishes. 

Age of 

Mollusks, 

Corals, and 

Crustaceans. 


Age of 
Acrogens and 
Gym no sperms . 

(Earliest 
Land Plants.) 
Age of Alga. 


u 



N 
O 

w 


' Huronian. .{Upper. 
( Lower. 

("Upper, or Norian. 
Laurentian .-(Middle, 

[Lower, or Bojian. 


Age of 

Protozoa. 

(First Animal 

Remains.) 


Indications of 

Plants not 
determinable. 



108 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

known, from their mode of occurrence in later 
deposits, to be results, direct or indirect, of the 
agency of life ; and if they afforded no traces 
of organic forms, still their chemical character 
would convey a presumption of their organic 
origin. But additional evidence has been ob- 
tained in the presence of certain remarkable 
laminated forms penetrated by microscopic 
tubes and canals, and which are supposed to 
be the remains of the calcareous skeletons of 
humbly-organized animals akin to the simplest 
of those now living in the sea. Such animals 
— little more than masses of living animal jelly 
— now abound in the waters, and protect them- 
selves by secreting calcareous skeletons, often 
complex and beautiful, and penetrated by pores, 
through which the soft animal within can send 
forth minute thread-like extensions of its body, 
which serve instead of limbs. The Laurentian 
fossil known as Eozoon Canadense (see Fig. 3) 
may have been the skeleton of such a lowly- 
organized animal ; and if so, it is the oldest 
living thing that we know. But if really the 
skeleton or covering of such an animal, Eozoon 
is larger than any of its successors, and quite 
as complex as any of them. There is nothing 
to show that it could have originated from dead 



Fig. 3. 





1. Small specimen of Eozoon Canadense, weathered out from the con- 
taining rock, and showing its laminated structure. 

2. Casts of irregular or acervaline chambers of upper part (magnified). 

3. Surface of a cast of a flat chamber, showing its constituent cham- 
berlets (magnified). 

4. Section of casts of flat chambers (magnified). From the Lauren- 
tian of Canada. ' 

10 109 



IIO FACTS AND FANCIES 

matter by any spontaneous action, any more 
than its modern representatives could do so. 
There is no evidence of its progress by evolu- 
tion into any higher form, and the group of an- 
imals to which it belongs has continued to in- 
habit the ocean throughout geological time with- 
out any perceptible advance in rank or com- 
plexity of structure. If, then, we admit the an- 
imal nature of this earliest fossil, we can derive 
from it no evidence of monistic evolution ; and 
if we deny its animal nature, we are confronted 
with a still graver difficulty in the next succeed- 
ing formations. 

Between the rocks which contain Eozoon and 
the next in which we find any abundant re- 
mains of life, there is a gap in geological history, 
either destitute of evidence of life or showing 
nothing materially in advance of Eozoon. In 
the Cambrian Age, however, we obtain a vast 
and varied accession of life. Here we find evi- 
dence that the sea swarmed with living crea- 
tures near akin to those which still inhabit it, 
and nearly as varied. Referring merely to 
leading groups, we have here the soft shell- 
fishes and the worms, the ordinary shellfishes, 
the sea-stars, and the corals, with the sponges. 
In short, had we been able to drop our dredge 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 1 1 

into the Cambrian or Lower Silurian ocean, 
we should have brought up representatives of 
all the leading types of invertebrate life that 
exist in the modern seas — different, it is true, 
in details of structure from those now existing, 
but constructed on the same principles and fill- 
ing the same places in nature. 

If we inquire as to the history of this swarm- 
ing marine life of the early Palaeozoic, we find 
that its several species, after enduring for a 
longer or a shorter time, one by one became 
extinct and were replaced by others belonging 
to the same groups. Thus there is in each 
great group a succession of new forms > distinct 
as species, but not perceptibly elevated in the 
scale of being. In many cases, indeed, the re- 
verse seems to be the case ; for it is not un- 
usual to find the successive dynasties of life in 
any one family manifesting degradation rather 
than elevation. New, and sometimes higher, 
forms, it is true, appear in the progress of time, 
but it is impossible, except by violent supposi- 
tions, to connect them genetically with any pre- 
decessors. The succession throughout the Pa- 
laeozoic presents the appearance rather of the 
unchanged persistence of each group under a 
succession of specific forms, and the introduc- 



112 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

tion from time to time of new groups, as if to 
replace others which were in process of decay 
and disappearance. 

In the later half of the Palaeozoic we find a 
number of higher forms breaking upon us with 
the same apparent suddenness as in the case of 
the early Cambrian animals. Fishes appear, and 
soon abound in a great variety of species, rep- 
resenting types of no mean rank, but, singular- 
ly enough, belonging, in many cases, to groups 
now very rare ; while the commoner tribes of 
modern fish do not appear. On the land, ba- 
trachian reptiles now abound, some of them 
very high in the sub-class to which they be- 
long. Scorpions, spiders, insects, and milli- 
pedes appear, as well as land-snails, and this 
not in one locality only, but over the whole 
northern hemisphere. At the same time, the 
land appears clothed with an exuberant vege- 
tation — not of the lowest types nor of the 
highest, but of intermediate forms, such as 
those of the pines, the club-mosses,* and the 
ferns, all of which attained in those days to 
magnitudes and numbers of species unsur- 
passed, and in some cases unequalled, in the 
modern world. Nor do they show any signs 
of an unformed or imperfect state. Their 



Fig. 4. 




Restoration (by G. F, Matthew) of a Trilobite (Paradoxides) from the 
Lower Cambrian, as an evidence of the existence of crustacean ani- 
mals of high type and great complexity in this early age. If such 
animals were evolved from Protozoa by slow and gradual changes, the 
time required would be greater than that which intervened between 
the Cambrian period and the present time. 

10 * 113 



114 FACTS AND FANCIES 

seeds and spores, their fruits and spore-cases, 
are as elaborately constructed, the tissues and 
forms of their stems and leaves as delicate and 
beautiful, as in any modern plants. So with 
the compound eyes and filmy wings of insects, 
the teeth, bones, and scales of batrachians and 
fishes ; all are as perfectly finished, and many 
quite as complex and elegant, as in the animals 
of the present day (Figure 4). 

This wonderful Palaeozoic Age was, however, 
but a temporary state of the earth. It passed 
away, and was replaced by the Mesozoic, em- 
phatically the reign of reptiles, when animals 
of that type attained to colossal magnitude, to 
variety of function and structure, to diversity 
of habitat in sea and on land, altogether unex- 
ampled in their degraded descendants of mod- 
ern times. Sea-lizards of gigantic size swarm- 
ed everywhere in the waters. On land, huge 
quadrupeds, like Atlantosaurus and Iguanodon 
and Megalosaurus, greatly exceeded the ele- 
phants of later times ; while winged reptiles — 
some of them of small size, others with wings 
twenty feet in expanse — flitted in the air. 
Strangely enough, with these reptilian lords 
appeared a few small and lowly mammals, 
forerunners of the coming age. Birds also 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 1 5 

make their appearance, and at the close of 
the period forests of broad-leaved trees alto- 
gether different from those of the Palaeozoic 
Age, and resembling those of our modern 
woods, appear for the first time over great 
portions of the northern hemisphere. 

The Cainozoic, or Tertiary, is the age of 
mammals and of man. In it the great rep- 
tilian tyrants of the Mesozoic disappear, and 
are replaced on land and sea by mammals or 
beasts of the same orders with those now liv- 
ing, though differing as to genera and species 
(see Fig. 5). So greatly, indeed, did mamma- 
lian life abound in this period that in the mid- 
dle part of the Tertiary most of the leading 
groups ,were represented by more numerous 
species than at present ; while many groups 
then existing have now no representatives. 
At the close of this great and wonderful pro- 
cession of living beings comes man himself — 
the last and crowning triumph of creation ; the 
head, thus far, of life on the earth. 

I have merely glanced at the leading events 
of this wonderful history, because its details 
may be found in so many manuals and popular 
works on geology. But if we imagine this 
great chain of life extending over periods of 



1 1 6 FACTS A A r D FA NCIES. 

enormous duration in comparison with the 
short span of human history, presenting to 
the naturalist hosts of strange forms which he 
could scarcely have imagined in his dreams, we 
may understand how exciting have been these 
discoveries crowded within the lives of two 
generations of geologists. Further, when we 
consider that the general course of this great 
development of life, beginning with Protozoa 
and ending with man, is from below upward — 
from the more simple to the more complex — 
and that there is of necessity, in this grand 
growth of life through the ages, a likeness or 
parallelism to the growth of the individual an- 
imal from its more simple to its more complex 
state, we can understand how naturalists should 
fancy that here they have been introduced to 
the workshop of Nature, and that they can 
discover how one creature may have been de- 
veloped from another by spontaneous evolu- 
tion. 

Many naturalists like Darwin and Haeckel, 
as well as philosophers like Herbert Spencer, 
are quite carried away by this analogy, and ap- 
pear unable to perceive that it is merely a gen- 
eral resemblance between processes altogether 
different in their nature, and therefore in their 



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Il8 FACTS AND FANCIES 

causes. The greater part, however, of the 
more experienced palaeontologists, or students 
of fossils, have long ago seen that in the larger 
field of the earth's history there is very much 
that cannot be found in the narrower field of 
the development of the individual animal ; and 
they have endeavored to reduce the succession 
of life to such general expressions as shall ren- 
der it more comprehensible and may at length 
enable us to arrive at explanations of its com- 
plex phenomena. Of these general expressions 
or conclusions I may state a few here, as appo- 
site to our present subject, and as showing how 
little of real support the facts of the earth's 
history give to the pseudo-gnosis of monistic 
evolution. 

i. The chain of life in geological time pre- 
sents a wonderful testimony to the reality of 
a beginning. Just as we know that any indi- 
vidual animal must have had its birth, its 
infancy, its maturity, and will reach an end 
of life, so we trace species and groups of 
species to their beginning, watch their culmi- 
nation, and perhaps follow them to their ex- 
tinction. It is true that there is a sense in 
which geology shows " no sign of a beginning, 
no prospect of an end;" but this is manifestly 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. IIQ 

because it has reached only a little way back 
toward the beginning of the earth as a whole, 
and can see in its present state no indication 
of the time or manner of the end. But its 
revelation of the fact that nearly all the ani- 
mals and plants of the present day had a very 
recent beginning in geological time, and its 
disclosure of the disappearance of one form 
of life after another as we go back in time, 
till we reach the comparatively few forms of 
life of the Lower Cambrian, and finally have 
to rest over the solitary grandeur of Eozoon i 
oblige it to say that nothing known to it is 
self-existent and eternal. 

2. The geological record informs us that the 
general laws of nature have continued un- 
changed from the earliest periods to which it 
relates until the present day. This is the true 
" uniformitarianism " of geology which holds to 
the dominion of existing causes from the first. 
But it does not refuse to admit variations in the 
intensity of these causes from time to time, and 
cycles of activity and repose, like those that 
we see on a small scale in the seasons, the 
occurrence of storms, or the paroxysms of 
volcanoes. When we find that the eyes of 
the old trilobites have had lenses and tubes 



120 FACTS AND FANCIES 

similar to those in the eyes of modern crusta- 
ceans, we have evidence of the persistence of 
the laws of light. When we see the structures 
of Palaeozoic leaves identical with those of our 
modern forests, we know that the arrange- 
ments of the soil, the atmosphere, and the 
rain were the same at that ancient time as 
at present. Yet, with all this, we also find 
evidence that long-continued periods of physi- 
cal quiescence were followed by great crum- 
plings and foldings of the earth's crust, and 
we know that this also is consistent with the 
operation of law ; for it often happens that 
causes long and quietly operating prepare 
for changes which may be regarded as sud- 
den and cataclysmic. 

3. Throughout the geological history there 
is progress toward greater complexity and 
higher grade, along with degradation and ex- 
tinction. Though experience shows that it 
may be quite possible that new discoveries 
may enable us to trace some of the higher 
forms of life farther back than we now find 
them, yet there can be no question that in the 
progress of geological time lower types have 
given place to higher, less specialized to more 
specialized. Curiously enough, no evidence 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 121 

proves this more clearly than that which re- 
lates to the degradation of old forms. When, 
for example, the reptiles of the Mesozoic Age 
were the lords of creation, there was appar- 
ently no place for the larger Mammalia which 
appear at the close of the reptile dynasty. So 
in the Palaeozoic, when trees of the cryp- 
togamous type predominated, there seems to 
have been no room in nature for the forests 
of modern type which succeeded them. Thus 
the earth at every period was fully peopled 
with living beings — at first with low and gen- 
eralized structures which attained their maxima 
at early stages and then declined, and after- 
ward with higher forms which took the places 
of those that were passing away. These latter, 
again, though their dominion was taken from 
them, were continued in lower positions under 
the new dynasties. Thus none of the lower 
types of life introduced was finally abandoned, 
but, after culminating in the highest forms of 
which it was capable, each was still continued, 
though with fewer species and a lower place. 
Examples of this abound in the history of all 
the leading groups of animals and plants. 

4. There is thus a continued plan and order 
in the history of life which cannot be fortuitous. 
11 



122 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

The chance interaction of organisms and their 
environment, even if we assume the organisms 
and environment as given to us, could never 
produce an orderly continuous progress of the 
utmost complexity in its detail, and extending 
through an enormous lapse of time. It has 
been well said that if a pair of dice were to 
turn up aces a hundred times in succession, 
any reasonable spectator would conclude that 
they were loaded dice ; so if countless millions 
of atoms and thousands of species, each in- 
cluding within itself most complex arrange- 
ment of parts, turn up in geological time in 
perfectly regular order and a continued grada- 
tion of progress, something more than chance 
must be implied. It is to be observed here 
that every species of animal or plant, of how- 
ever low grade, consists of many co-ordinated 
parts in a condition of the nicest equilibrium. 
Any change occurring which produces unequal 
or disproportionate deve^pment, as the ex- 
perience of breeders of abnormal varieties of 
animals and plants abundantly proves, imperils 
the continued existence of the species. Changes 
must, therefore, in order to be profitable, affect 
the parts of the organism simultaneously and 
symmetrically. The chances of this may well 



Fig. 6. 




Group of Plants (restored) from the Devonian period, illustrating 
the complexity and beauty of the earliest known land vegetation, 
though many of the leading forms of modern plants are unknown in 
this very ancient period. 



123 



124 FACTS AND FANCIES 

be compared to the casting of aces a hundred 
times in succession, and are so infinitely small 
as to be incredible under any other supposition 
than that of intelligent design. 

5. The progress of life in geological time. 
Just as the growth of trees is promoted or 
arrested by the vicissitudes of summer and 
winter, so in the course of the geological his- 
tory there have been periods of pause and ac- 
celeration in the work of advancement. This 
is in accordance with the general analogy of 
the operations of nature, and is in no way at 
variance with the doctrine of uniformity already 
referred to. Nor has it anything in common 
with the unfounded idea, at one time enter- 
tained, of successive periods of entire destruc- 
tion and restoration of life. Prolific periods 
of this kind appear in the marine invertebrates 
of the early Cambrian, the plants (Figure 6) 
and fishes of the Devonian, the batrachians of 
the Carboniferous, the reptiles of the Trias, the 
broad-leaved trees of the Cretaceous, and the 
mammals of the early Tertiary. A remarkable 
contrast is afforded by the later Tertiary and 
modern time, in which, with the exception of 
man himself, and perhaps a very few other 
species, no new forms of life have been intro- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 25 

duced, while many old forms have perished. 
This is somewhat unfortunate, since, in such 
a period of stagnation as that in which we 
live, we can scarcely hope to witness either 
the creation or the evolution of a new species. 
Evolutionists themselves — those, at least, who \ . 
are willing to allow their theory to be at all j_ ' 
modified by facts — now perceive this ; and 
hence we have the doctrine, advanced by 
Mivart, Le Conte, and others, of "critical 
periods," or periods of rapid evolution alter- 
nating with others of greater quiescence. It 
is further to be observed here that in a limited 
way and with reference to certain forms of 
life we can see a reason for these intermittent 
creations. The greater part of the marine 
fossils known to us are from rocks now raised 
up in our continents, and they lived at periods 
when the continents were submerged. Now, 
in geological time these periods of submer- 
gence alternated with others of elevation ; and 
it is manifest that each period of continental 
submergence gave scope for the introduction 
of numbers of new marine species, while each 
continental elevation, on the other hand, gave 
opportunity for the increase of land-life. Fur- 
ther, periods when a warm climate prevailed 
11* 



126 FACTS AND FANCIES 

in the arctic regions — periods when plants 
such as now live in temperate regions could 
enjoy six months of continuous sunshine — 
were eminently favorable to the development 
of such plants, and were utilized for the intro- 
duction of new floras, which subsequently 
spread to the southward. Thus we see phys- 
ical changes occurring in an orderly succes- 
sion and made subservient to the progress of 
life. 

6. There is no direct evidence that in the 
course of geological time one species has been 
gradually or suddenly changed into another. 
Of the latter we could scarcely expect to find 
any evidence in fossils ; but of the former, if it 
had occurred, we might expect to find indica- 
tions in the history of some of the numerous 
species which have been traced through succes- 
sive geological formations. Species which thus 
continue for a great length of time usually pre- 
sent numerous varietal forms which have some- 
times been described as new species ; but when 
carefully scrutinized they are found to be mere- 
ly local and temporary, and to pass into each 
other. On the other hand, we constantly find 
species replaced by others entirely new, and 
this without any transition. The two classes 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. \2J 

of facts are essentially different ; and though it 
is possible to point out in the newer geological 
formations some genera and species allied to 
others which have preceded them, and to sup- 
pose that the later forms proceeded from the 
earlier, still, when the connecting-links cannot 
be found, this is mere supposition, not scientific 
certainty. Further, it proceeds on the principle 
of arbitrary choice of certain forms out of many 
without any evidence of genetic connection. 
The worthlessness of such derivation is well 
shown in a case which has often been paraded 
as an illustration of evolution — the supposed 
genealogy of the horse. In America a series 
of horse-like animals has been selected, begin- 
ning with the Orohippus of the Eocene, and 
these have been marshalled as the ancestors of 
the fossil horses of America ; for there are no 
native horses in America in the modern period. 
Yet this is purely arbitrary,and dependent mere- 
ly on a succession of genera more and more 
closely resembling the modern horse being pro- 
curable from successive Tertiary deposits, often 
widely separated in time and place. In Europe, 
on the other hand, the ancestry of the horse 
has been traced back to Palceotherium — an en- 
tirely different form — by just as likely indica- 



128 FACTS AND FANCIES 

tions. Both genealogies can scarcely be true, 
and there is no actual proof of either. The 
existing American horses, which are of European 
parentage, are, according to the theory, descend- 
ants of Palceotherium, not of Orohippus ; but 
if we had not known this on historical evidence, 
there would have been nothing to prevent us 
from tracing them to the latter animal. This 
simple consideration alone is sufficient to show 
that such genealogies are not of the nature of 
scientific evidence. 

It is further to be observed that some of the 
ablest palaeontologists, and those who have en- 
joyed the largest opportunities of observation 
and comparison, attach no value whatever to 
theories of evolution as accounting for the 
origin of species. One of these is Joachim 
Barrande, the palaeontologist of Bohemia, and 
the first authority in Europe on the fossils of 
the older formations. Barrande, like some 
other eminent palaeontologists, has the misfor- 
tune to be an unbeliever in the modern gospel 
of evolution, but he has certainly labored to 
overcome his doubts with greater assiduity than 
even many of the apostles of the new doctrine ; 
and if he is not convinced, the stubbornness of 
the facts he has had to deal with must bear the 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 29 

blame. In connection with his great and class- 
ical work on the Silurian fossils of Bohemia, it 
has been necessary for him to study the similar 
remains of every other country ; and he has 
used this immense mass of material in prepar- 
ing statistics of the population of the Palaeozoic 
world more perfect than any other naturalist 
has been able to produce. In successive me- 
moirs he has applied these statistical results to 
the elucidation of the history of the oldest group 
of crustaceans — the trilobites — and the highest 
group of the mollusks — the cephalopods. In 
his latest memoir of this kind he takes up the 
brachiopods, or lamp-shells, a group of bivalve 
shellfishes very ancient and very abundantly 
represented in all the older formations of every 
part of the world, and which thus affords the 
most ample material for tracing its evolution, 
with the least possible difficulty in the nature 
of " imperfection of the record." 

Barrande, in the publication before us, dis- 
cusses the brachiopods with reference, first, to 
the variations observed within the limits of the 
species, eliminating in this way mere synonyms 
and varieties mistaken for species. He also 
arrives at various important conclusions with 
reference to the origin of species and varietal 



I30 FACTS AND FANCIES 

forms, which apply to the cephalopods and 
trilobites as well as to the brachiopods, and 
some of which, as the writer has elsewhere 
shown, apply very generally to fossil animals 
and plants. One of these is that different con- 
temporaneous species, living under the same 
conditions, exhibit very different degrees of 
vitality and variability. Another is the sud- 
den appearance at certain horizons of a great 
number of species, each manifesting its com- 
plete specific characters. With very rare ex- 
ceptions, also, varietal forms are contempo- 
raneous with the normal form of their specific 
type, and occur in the same localities. Only 
in a very few cases do they survive it. This 
and the previous results, as well as the fact that 
parallel changes go on in groups having no 
direct reaction on each other, prove that vari- 
ation is not a progressive influence, and that 
specific distinctions are not dependent on it, 
but on the " sovereign action of one and the 
same creative cause," as Barrande expresses 
it. These conclusions, it may be observed, are 
not arrived at by that " slap-dash " method of 
mere assertion so often followed on the other 
side of these questions, but by the most severe 
and painstaking induction, and with careful 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 3 1 

elaboration of a few apparent exceptions and 
doubtful cases. 

His second heading relates to the distribu- 
tion in time of the genera and species of 
brachiopods. This he illustrates with a series 
of elaborate tables, accompanied by explana- 
tion. He then proceeds to consider the animal 
population of each formation, in so far as 
brachiopods, cephalopods, and trilobites are 
concerned, with reference to the following 
questions: (i) How many species are con- 
tinued from the previous formation unchanged? 
(2) How many may be regarded as modifica- 
tions of previous species ? (3) How many are 
migrants from other regions where they have 
been known to exist previously ? (4) How 
many are absolutely new species? These 
questions are applied to each of fourteen suc- 
cessive formations included in the Silurian of 
Bohemia. The total number of species of 
brachiopods in these formations is six hundred 
and forty, giving an average of 45.71 to each, 
and the results of accurate study of each 
species in its characters, its varieties, its geo- 
graphical and geological range, are expressed 
in the following short statement, which should 
somewhat astonish those gentlemen who are 



132 FACTS AXD FANCIES 

so fond of asserting that derivation is " demon- 
strated " by geological facts : 

1. Species continued unchanged 2S per cent. 

2. Species migrated from abroad 7 " 

3. Species continued with modification o " 

4. New species without known ancestors .... 65 '•' 

IOO per cent. 

He shows that the same or very similar pro- 
portions hold with respect to the cephalopods 
and trilobites, and, in fact, that the proportion 
of species in the successive Silurian faunae 
which can be attributed to descent with mod- 
ification is absolutely nil. He may well remark 
that in the face of such facts the origin o\ 
species is not explained by what he terms Us 
clans pottiques de V imagination. 

The third part of Barrande's memoir, relat- 
ing to the comparison of the Silurian brachio- 
pods of Bohemia with those of other countries, 
though of great scientific interest, and import- 
ant in extending the conclusions of his previous 
chapters, does not so nearly concern our pres- 
ent subject. 

I have thou oh t it well to direct attention to 

O 

these memoirs of Barrande, because they form 
a specimen of conscientious work with the 
view of ascertaining- if there is any basis in 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 33 

nature for the doctrine of spontaneous evolu- 
tion of species, and, I am sorry to say, a 
striking contrast to the mixture of fact and 
fancy on this subject which too often passes 
current for science in England, America, and 
Germany. Barrande's studies are also well 
deserving the attention of our younger men of 
science, as they have before them, more espe- 
cially in the widely-spread Palaeozoic formations 
of America, an admirable field for similar work. 
In an appendix to his first chapter Barrande 
mentions that the three men who in their 
respective countries are the highest authorities 
on Palaeozoic brachiopods, Hall, Davidson, and 
De Koninck, agree with him in the main in his 
conclusions, and he refers to an able memoir 
by D'Archiac in the same sense, on the cre- 
taceous brachiopods. 

It should be especially satisfactory to those 
naturalists who, like the writer, had failed to 
see in the palaeontological record any good 
evidence for the production of species by 
those simple and ready methods in vogue 
with most evolutionists, to note the extension 
of actual facts with respect to the geological 
dates and precise conditions of the introduc- 
tion of new forms, and to find that these are 

12 



134 FACTS AND FANCIES 

more and more tending to prove the existence 
of highly complex creative laws in connection 
with the great plan of the Creator as carried 
out in geological time. These new facts should 
also warn the ordinary reader of the danger 
of receiving without due caution those general 
and often boastful assertions respecting these 
great and intricate questions made by persons 
not acquainted with their actual difficulty, or by 
enthusiastic speculators disposed to overlook 
everything not in accordance with their pre- 
conceived ideas. 

It may be asked, Is there, then, no place in 
the geological record even for theistic evolu- 
tion ? This it would be rash to affirm. We 
can only say that up to this time there is no 
proof of it. If nature has followed this meth- 
od, she seems carefully to have concealed the 
process. If such changes have occurred as to 
evolve from a species, say of mollusk or coral, 
belonging to one geological period some form 
found in another period, and recognized as a 
distinct species, we have to suppose that the 
capacity for such change was in some way im- 
planted in the species on its creation, and ready 
to be developed under favorable conditions or 
in the lapse of time. For example, we may 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 135 

suppose that a plant originating in the long arc- 
tic summers of a warm period might, on migrat- 
ing southward into the alternations of day and 
night, undergo material changes. A marine 
animal long confined to a limited sea-basin 
might, on being permitted to expand over a 
wide submerged continent, be greatly modified 
in its structure and habits. Up to a certain 
point we know that such changes have oc- 
curred, and Barrande himself has largely illus- 
trated them. As an example which I have my- 
self studied, I may refer to the common shells 
known on our coasts as sand-clams (My a trun- 
cata and Mya arenarid). The former species, 
in the cold waters of the Glacial Age, assumed 
a short form which it still retains in the arctic 
regions, and occasionally in the colder waters 
of the more temperate regions, though there a 
more elongated form prevails. Evidently the 
two forms are interchangeable according to the 
temperature of the water. Still, if we could 
imagine a permanent refrigeration over all the 
area occupied by the animal, the short form 
only might survive, and might be supposed to 
be a distinct species. This did not occur, how- 
ever, even in the Glacial Age, and is not likely 
to occur. Further, the allied, though quite dis- 



I36 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

tinct, species Mya arenaria has lived with the 
other through all the long duration of the Post- 
Pliocene and modern periods, and, though hav- 
ing its own range of varietal forms, has pre- 
served its distinctness. Cases of this kind are 
obviously of the nature of varietal, not specific, 
change. 

In conclusion, the whole of the facts and laws 
above detailed point to a predetermined plan 
and to an intelligent Creator, of whose laws 
and modes of procedure we may learn much 
by patient and careful study. This surely gives 
a great additional interest to that marvellous 
story of the earth which in these last days has 
been revealed to us by the study of the rocks. 
We may also infer that not one method only 
but many have been employed in replenishing 
the earth at first with living beings, and in add- 
ing to these from time to time. To what ex- 
tent we may be able to understand these, time 
and future discoveries will show. In the mean 
time, we can only suggest such general theories 
as those referred to in the first of these lec- 
tures, but can affirm that Agnostic Evolution is 
altogether abortive in its attempts to solve the 
problem of the chain of life in geological time. 



IV. 

The Origin and Antiquity of Man. 



12* 



LECTURE IV. 

THE ORIGIN AND ANTIQUITY OF MAN. 

MAN, when regarded merely as an organ- 
ism, is closely related to the lower an- 
imals. His body is constructed on the same 
general plan with theirs. More especially, he 
is near akin to the other members of the class 
Mammalia. But we must not forget that even 
as an animal man is somewhat widely separated 
from his humbler relations (see Fig. 7). It is 
easy to say that every bone, every muscle, every 
convolution of his brain, has its counterpart in 
the corresponding parts of an orang or a go- 
rilla. But, admitting this, it is also true that 
every one of these parts is different, and that 
the aggregate of all the differences mounts up 
to an enormous sum-total, more especially in 
relation to habits and to capacities for ac- 
tion. Those remarkable homologies or like- 
nesses of plan which obtain in the animal king- 
dom are very wonderful, and the study of them 
greatly enlarges our conceptions of the unity 



140 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

of nature ; but we must never forget that such 
general agreements in plan cover the most pro- 
found differences in detail and in adaptation 
to use, and that, while they indicate a common 
type, this may rather point to a unity of design 
than to a mere accidental unity of descent. 

There is a method, well known to natural 
science, for measuring and indicating the di- 
vergence of man from his nearest allies. This 
is the application of those principles of classifi- 
cation which, though of essential importance in 
science, are by some modern students of nature 
strangely overlooked or misunderstood. Per- 
haps in nothing has the progress of ideas of 
evolution made a more injurious impress on 
the advance of knowledge than in the manner 
in which it has caused many eminent and able 
naturalists to diverge from all logical propriety 
in their ideas of classification. Still, in so far 
as man is concerned, there are some facts of 
this kind which are indisputable. He certainly 
constitutes a distinct species, including many 
races, which all, however, have common specific 
characters. On the other hand, no one pre- 
tends that he is conspecijic with any lower an- 
imal. All naturalists would now deride the 
stories, at one time current, that gorillas and 



Fig. 7. 




Man and his "poor relation," the gorilla. {After Huxley.') The 
head of the gorilla, with immense jaws and small brain-case, its huge 
spines on the neck, its long arms, its elongated pelvis, and its hand- 
like feet, with its incapacity to assume the erect position, indicate its 
ordinal difference from man, and the necessity of many intermediate 
forms, still unknown, to connect the two species. 



141 



142 FACTS AND FANCIES 

chimpanzees are degraded races of men. On 
the other hand, even Haeckel admits that there 
is a wide gap, unfilled by any recent or any fos- 
sil creature, between man and the highest apes. 
Again, no generic relationship can be claimed 
as between man and the lower animals. He 
presents such structural differences as entitle 
him to rank by himself in the genus Homo. 
Still further, the ablest naturalists, before the 
rise of Darwinism, held that man was entitled 
to be placed in a separate family or order from 
the apes. Modern evolutionists prefer to fall 
back on the old arrangement of Linnaeus, and 
to place man and apes together in the group 
of Primates, which, however, Linnaeus would 
not have regarded as precisely of the same 
value with an order as now held. In this those 
of them who have sufficient ability to compre- 
hend the facts of the case are undoubtedly 
warped in judgment by the tendency of their 
philosophy to magnify resemblances and to 
minimize differences ; while the herd of feebler 
men have their ideas of classification thorough- 
ly confused by the doctrine which they have 
received as a creed dictated by authority, and 
to which they adhere under the influence of 
fear. In point of fact, the differences between 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 43 

man and any other animal are so wide that they 
warrant a distinction, not merely specific and 
generic, but of a family and an ordinal cha- 
racter. 

Perhaps the best way to appreciate this will 
be to suppose that man has become extinct, 
and that in some future geological period his 
fossil remains are studied by some new race of 
intelligent beings, and compared with those of 
the lower animals his contemporaries. Let us 
suppose that they have disinterred a human 
skull or the bones of a human foot. From the 
foot they would learn that man is not an arbo- 
real animal, but intended to walk erect on the 
ground. They could infer from this certain 
structures and uses of the vertebral column 
and of the anterior limbs different from those 
found in apes, and which would certainly induce 
them to conclude that they had obtained re- 
mains indicating a new order of mammals. If 
they had found the foot alone, they might doubt 
whether the possessor of this strange and high- 
ly-specialized organ had been carnivorous or 
herbivorous, more nearly allied to the bears or 
to the monkeys. Should they now find the 
skull, these doubts would be solved, and they 
would know that the new animal was some- 



144 FACTS AND FANCIES 

what nearer to the apes than to the bears, but 
still at a very remote distance from them, and 
this indicated by peculiarities of brain-case, jaws, 
and teeth, proving divergences in function still 
wider than those apparent in the structures. 
They would also plainly perceive that to link 
man with his nearest mammalian allies would 
require the discovery of several missing links. 
When we consider the psychological endow- 
ments of man, his divergence from lower 
animals becomes immensely greater. In his 
external senses and in the perceptions derived 
through them it is true he resembles the brutes. 
There is also much in common with them in 
his appetites and emotions, and in some of the 
lower manifestations of intelligence. But he 
adds to this a higher reason, which causes his 
actions to be differently determined from theirs ; 
and this higher reason, or spiritual nature, leads 
him to abstract ideas, to consciousness, to 
notions of right and of wrong, to ideas of 
higher spiritual beings and of futurity alto- 
gether unknown to lower animals. This divine 
reason, in connection with special vocal con- 
trivances, also bestows on him the gift of 
speech. Nor can speech be reduced to a 
mere imitation of natural sounds ; for, grant- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 45 

ing that these sounds may be the raw material 
of speech, yet man is enabled to apply this to 
the expression of ideas in a manner altogether 
peculiar to himself. Scientific precision obliges 
us to recognize these differences, and to admit 
that they place man on an entirely different 
plane from the lower animals. 

Perhaps the expression "a different plane " 
is scarcely correct, for man can exist on many 
different planes — a fact which has produced 
some confusion in the minds of naturalists 
not versed in psychological questions, though, 
when rightly considered, it marks very strongly 
the distinction between the man and the mere 
animal. 

The lower animals are tied up by invariable 
instincts to certain lines of action which keep 
all the individuals of any species on nearly the 
same level, except where some little disturb- 
ance may be caused by man in his processes 
of domestication. But with man it is quite 
different. He is emancipated from the bond 
of instinct, and left free to follow the guidance 
of his own will, determined by his own reason. 
It follows that the habits and the actions of 
a man depend on what he knows and believes, 
and on the deductions of his reason from these 

13 



14^ FACTS AND FANCIES 

premises. Without knowledge, culture, and 
training, man is more helpless than any brute. 
With the noblest and highest capacities, he 
may devise and follow habits of life more base 
than those of any mere animal. Thus there 
is an almost immeasurable difference between 
the Godlike height to which man can attain by 
the right use of his powers and the depth to 
which ignorance and depravity may degrade 
him. It follows that the degradation of the 
lower races of men is as strong a proof of 
the difference between man and the lower 
animals as is the elevation of the higher races. 
Both are characteristic of a being emancipated 
from the control of instinct, knowing good and 
evil, free to choose, and differing in these 
respects from every other creature on earth. 
Such is man as we find him ; and we may 
well ask by what process animal instinct could 
ever spontaneously develop human freedom and 
human reason. 

But we might have evidence of such a pro- 
cess, however strange and improbable it might 
at first sight appear. We might be able to 
trace man back in history or by prehistoric 
remains to greater and greater approximation 
to the lower animals, and might thus bridge 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 47 

over the great chasm now existing between 
man and beast. It may be instructive, there- 
fore, to glance at what geology discloses as to 
the origin of man and his first appearance on 
the earth. 

In the older geological formations no remains 
of man or of his works have been found. Nor 
do we expect to find them, for none of the 
animals more nearly related to man then ex- 
isted, and the condition of the earth was proba- 
bly not suited to them. Nor do we find human 
remains even in the earlier Tertiary. Here 
also we do not expect them, for the Mammalia 
of those times were all specifically distinct from 
those of the modern world. It is only in the 
Pliocene period that we begin to find modern 
species of mammals. Here, therefore, we may 
look for human remains ; but we do not find 
them as yet, and it is only at the close of the 
Pliocene, or even after the succeeding Glacial 
period, that we find undoubted traces of man. 
Let us glance at the significance of this. 

Mammalian life probably culminated or at- 
tained to its maximum in the Miocene and the 
early Pliocene periods. Then there were more 
numerous, larger, and better-developed quadru- 
peds on our continents than we now find. For 



I48 FACTS AND FANCIES 

example, the elephants, the noblest of the 
mammals, are at present represented by two 
species confined to India and parts of Africa.* 
In the Middle Tertiary there were, in addition 
to the ordinary elephants, two other genera, 
Mastodon and Dinotherium, and there were 
many species which were distributed over the 
whole northern hemisphere. The sub-Hima- 
layan deposits of India alone have, I believe, 
afforded seven species, some of them of 
grander dimensions than either of those now 
existing. We have no trustworthy evidence 
as yet that man lived at this period. If he had, 
he either would have required the protection 
of a special Eden, or would have needed su- 
perhuman strength and sagacity. 

But the grand mammalian life of the Middle 
Tertiary was destined to die out. At the close 
of the Pliocene came an age of refrigeration, 
when arctic cold crept down over our conti- 
nents far to the south, and when most of the 
animals suited to temperate climates were 
either frozen out or driven southward. During, 
or closing, this period was also a great sub- 
mergence of the continents, which must have 

* The Ceylon elephant is by some believed to be distinct, but is 
probably a variety of the Indian species. 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 49 

been equally destructive to mammalian life, 
and which extended over both Eurasia and 
America till the summits of some of the high- 
est hills were under water. Attempts have 
been made to show that man existed before 
or during the Glacial Age, but this is very 
unlikely, and, as I have elsewhere argued, the 
evidence adduced to prove so great antiquity 
of man, whether in America or Europe, has 
altogether broken down.* 

At the close of the Glacial period the conti- 
nents re-emerged and became more extensive 
than at present. Survivors of the Pliocene 
species, as well as other species not previously 
known, spread themselves over this new land. 
It would appear that it was in this " Post- 
Glacial " period that man made his appear- 
ance, and that he was then contemporary with 
many large animals now extinct, and was the 
possessor of wider continental areas than his 
descendants now enjoy. To this age belong 
those human bones and implements found in 
the older cave and gravel deposits of Europe, 
and which are referred to those palaeolithic or 
palaeocosmic ages which preceded the dawn of 
history in Europe and the arrival therein of 

* Fossil Men (London, 1880), Appendix. 
13 * 



150 FACTS AND FANCIES 

the present European races. The occupation 
of Europe, and probably of Western Asia, by 
these oldest tribes of men was closed by a 
subsidence or submergence at the end of that 
" second continental period," as it has been 
called by Lyell,* in which they lived. When 
the land was restored to its present condition, 
they were replaced by the ancestors of the 
present European races. 

It may be well here to tabulate that later por- 
tion of the earth's geological history in which 
man appeared, more especially as it is some- 
times arranged in a manner not suited to con- 
vey a correct impression of the actual succes- 
sion. It will be seen by the general table given 
in the last lecture that the latest of the Tertiary 
aofes is that known as the Pleistocene or Post- 
Pliocene, and this, with the succeeding modern 
period, may be best arranged as follows : 

I. Pleistocene, including — 

(a) Early Pleistocene, or First Continental Period. Land very 
extensive, moderate climate. 

{b) Later Pleistocene, or Glacial (including Dawkins' " Mid- 
Pleistocene "). In this there was a great prevalence of cold and 
glacial conditions, and a great submergence of the northern land. 

II. Modern, or Period of Man and Modern Mammals, includ- 
ing— 

[a) Post- Glacial, or Second Continental Period, in which the 

* The first continental period was that of the earlier Pliocene. 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 5 I 

land was again very extensive, and palaeocosmic man was con- 
temporary with some great mammals — as the mammoth, now 
extinct — and the area of land in the northern hemisphere was 
greater than at present. (This represents the Late Pleistocene of 
Dawkins.) It was terminated by a great and very general sub- 
sidence, accompanied by the disappearance of palseocosmic man 
and some large Mammalia, and which may be identical with the 
historical deluge.* 

[b) Recent, when the continents attained their present levels, 
existing races of men colonized Europe, and living species of 
mammals. This includes both the Prehistoric and the Historic 
Period. 

The palseocosmic men of the above table are 
the oldest certainly known to us, and it has been 
truly said of them that they are so closely re- 
lated to modern races that, on any hypothesis 
of gradual evolution, we must look for the 
transition from apes to snen not merely in the 
Eocene Tertiary, but even in the Mesozoic — that 
is, in formations vastly older than any containing 
any remains so far as known either of man or 
of apes. That these most ancient men were in 
truth most truly human, and that they presented 
no transition to lower animals, will appear from 
the following notices, which I condense from a 
work*, of my own in which these subjects are 
more fully treated : 

* The precise date in years assignable to this event geology cannot 
determine ; but I have elsewhere shown that the actual antiquity of the 
palaeocosmic or antediluvian man has been greatly exaggerated. 



152 FACTS AND FANCIES 

The beautiful work of Lartet and Christy 
has vividly portrayed to us the antiquities of 
the limestone plateau of the Dordogne — the 
ancient Aquitania — remains which recall to us 
a population of Horites, or cave-dwellers, of a 
time anterior to the dawn of history in France, 
living much like the modern hunter-tribes of 
America, and, as already stated, possibly con- 
temporary — in their early history, at least — 
with the mammoth and its extinct companions 
of the later Post- Pliocene forests. We have al- 
ready noticed the arts and implements of these 
people, but what manner of people were they 
in themselves ? The answer is given to us by 
the skeletons found # in the cave of Cro-ma- 
gnon. This cavern is a shelter or hollow under 
an overhanging ledge of limestone, and exca- 
vated originally by the action of the weather 
on a softer bed. It fronts the south-west and 
the little river Vezere ; and, having originally 
been about eight feet high and nearly twenty 
deep, must have formed a cosey shelter from 
rain or cold or summer sun, and with a pleas- 
ant outlook from its front. All rude races have 
much sagacity in making selections of this sort. 
Being nearly fifty feet wide, it was capacious 
enough to accommodate several families, and 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. I 5 3 

when in use it no doubt had trees or shrubs in 
front, and may have been further completed by 
stones, poles, or bark placed across the open- 
ing. It seems, however, in the first instance to 
have been used only at intervals, and to have 
been left vacant for considerable portions of 
time. Perhaps it was visited only by hunting- 
or war-parties. But subsequently it was per- 
manently occupied, and this for so long a time 
that in some places ashes and carbonaceous 
matter a foot and a half deep, with bones, im- 
plements, etc., were accumulated. By this time 
the height of the cavern had been much dimin- 
ished, and, instead of clearing it out for future 
use, it was made a place of burial, in which four 
or five individuals were interred. Of these, 
two were men, one of great age, the other 
probably in the prime of life. A third was a 
woman of about thirty or forty years of age. 
The other remains were too fragmentary to 
give very certain results. 

These bones, with others to be mentioned 
in connection with them, unquestionably belong 
to the oldest human inhabitants known in West- 
ern Europe. They have been most carefully ex- 
amined by several competent anatomists and 
archaeologists, and the results have been pub- 



154 FACTS AND FANCIES 

lished with excellent figures in the Reliquice 
Aquitanicce. They are, therefore, of the ut- 
most interest for our present purpose, and I 
shall try so to divest the descriptions of ana- 
tomical details as to give a clear notion of their 
character. The ' Old Man of Cro-magnon ' 
was of great stature, being nearly six feet 
high. More than this, his bones show that he 
was of the strongest and most athletic muscu- 
lar development — a Samson in strength ; and 
the bones of the limbs have the peculiar form 
which is characteristic of athletic men habit- 
uated to rough walking, climbing, and running, 
for this is, I believe, the real meaning of the 
enormous strength of the thigh-bone and the 
flattened condition of the leg in this and other 
old skeletons. It occurs to some extent, though 
much less than in this old man, in American 
skeletons. His skull presents all the charac- 
ters of advanced age, though the teeth had 
been worn down to the sockets without being 
lost ; which, again, is the character of some, 
though not of all, aged Indian skulls. The 
skull proper, or brain-case, is very long — more 
so than in ordinary modern skulls — and this 
length is accompanied with a great breadth ; 
so that the brain was of greater size than in 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. I 55 

average modern men, and the frontal region 
was largely and well developed. In this respect 
this most ancient skull fails utterly to vindicate 
the expectations of those who would regard 
prehistoric men as approaching to the apes. 
It is at the opposite extreme. The face, how- 
ever, presented very peculiar characters. It 
was extremely broad, with projecting cheek- 
bones and heavy jaw, in this resembling the 
coarse types of the American face, and the 
eye-orbits were square and elongated laterally. 
The nose was large and prominent, and the 
jaws projected somewhat forward. This man, 
therefore, had, as to his features, some resem- 
blance to the harsher type of American physi- 
ognomy, with overhanging brows, small and 
transverse eyes, high cheek-bones, and coarse 
mouth. He had not lived to so great an age 
without some rubs, for his thigh-bone showed a 
depression which must have resulted from a 
severe wound — perhaps from the horn of some 
wild animal or the spear of an enemy. 

The woman presented similar characters of 
stature and cranial form modified by her sex, 
and must in form and visage have been a ver- 
itable squaw, who, if her hair and complexion 
were suitable, would have passed at once for an 



1 56 FACTS AND FANCIES 

Amer'can Indian woman, of unusual size and 
development. Her head bears sad testimony to 
the violence of her age and people. She died 
from the effects of a blow from a stone-headed 
pogamogan or spear, which has penetrated the 
right side of the forehead with so clean a frac- 
ture as to indicate the extreme rapidity and 
force of its blow. It is inferred from the con- 
dition of the edges of this wound that she may 
have survived its infliction for two weeks or 
more. If, as is most likely, the wound was re- 
ceived in some sudden attack by a hostile tribe, 
they must have been driven off or have retired, 
leaving the wounded woman in the hands of her 
friends to be tended for a time, and then buried, 
either with other members of her family or with 
others who had perished in the same skirmish. 
Unless the wound was inflicted in sleep, during 
a night-attack, she must have fallen, not in 
flight, but with her face to the foe, perhaps 
aiding the resistance of her friends or shielding 
her little ones from destruction. With the peo- 
ple of Cro-magnon, as with the American In- 
dians, the care of the wounded was probably a 
sacred duty, not to be neglected without incur- 
ring the greatest disgrace and the vengeance 
of the guardian spirits of the sufferers. 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 157 

The skulls of these people have been com- 
pared to those of the modern Esthonians or 
Lithuanians ; but on the authority of M. Qua- 
trefages it is stated that, while this applies to 
the probably later race of small men found in 
some of the Belgian caves, it does not apply so 
well to the people of Cro-magnon. Are, then, 
these people the types of any ancient, or of the 
most ancient, European race ? One answer is 
given by the remarkable skeleton of Mentone, 
in the South of France, found under circum- 
stances equally suggestive of great antiquity 
(Figure 8). Dr. Riviere, in a memoir on this 
skeleton illustrated by two beautiful photo- 
graphs, shows that the characters of the skull 
and of the bones of the limbs are precisely 
similar to those of the Cro-magnon skeleton, 
indicating a perfect identity of race, while the 
objects found with the skeleton are similar in 
character. 

The ornaments of Cro-magnon were per- 
forated shells from the Atlantic and pieces of 
ivory. Those at Mentone were perforated Ner- 
itinae from the Mediterranean and canine-teeth 
of the deer. In both cases there was evidence 
that these ancient people painted themselves 
with red oxide of iron ; and, as if to complete 

14 



158 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

the similarity, the Mentone man had an old 
healed-up fracture of the radius of the left arm, 
the effect of a violent blow or of a fall. Skulls 
found at Clichy and Grenelle in 1868 and 1869 
are described by Professor Broca and Mr. Fleu- 
rens as of the same general type, and the re- 
mains found at Gibraltar and in the cave of 
Paviland, in England, seem also to have be- 
longed to the same race. The celebrated En- 
gis skull, believed to have belonged to a con- 
temporary of the mammoth, is also precisely of 
the same type, though less massive than that of 
Cro-magnon ; and, lastly, even the somewhat 
degraded Neanderthal skull, found in a cave 
near Dusseldorf, though, like that of Clichy, in- 
ferior in frontal development, is referable to the 
same peculiar long-headed style of man, in so 
far as can be judged from the portion that re- 
mains. 

Let it be observed, then, that these skulls 
are probably the oldest known in the world, 
and they are all referable to one race of men ; 
and let us ask what they tell as to the posi- 
tion and character of palaeolithic man. The tes- 
timony is here fortunately wellnigh unanimous. 
Huxley, who well compares some of the pecu- 
liar features of these ancient skulls and skele- 



Fio. 8. 




Portion of the skeleton of the fossil man of Mentone. This skeleton 
was discovered by Dr. Riviere under about twenty feet of accumulated 
debris. It belongs to the palseocosmic age, and illustrates the high 
type, physically, of the man of that period. The skeleton, like others 
of that age, indicates a man of great stature and muscular vigor, and 
with brain above the average size. {Afte?- Riviere?) 



i59 



l6o FACTS AND FANCIES 

tons to those of Australians and other rude 
tribes, and of the ancient Danes of Borroby — 
a people not improbably allied to the Estho- 
nians and Fins — remarks that the manner in 
which the individual heads of the most homoge- 
neous rude races differ from each other " in the 
same characters, though perhaps not to the same 
extent with the Engis and Neanderthal skulls, 
seems to prohibit any cautious reasoner from 
affirming the latter to have necessarily been of 
distinct races." My own experience in Amer- 
ican skulls, and the still larger experience of Dr. 
Wilson, fully confirm the wisdom of this caution. 
. . . He adds : "Finally, the comparatively large 
cranial capacity of the Neanderthal skull, over- 
laid though it may be by pithecoid, bony walls, 
and the completely human proportions of the ac- 
companying limb-bones, together with the very 
fair development of the Engis skull, clearly in- 
dicate that the first traces of the primordial 
stock whence man has been derived need no 
longer be sought by those who entertain any 
form of the doctrine of progressive develop- 
ment in the newest Tertiaries, but that they may 
be looked for in an epoch more distant from 
that of the Elephas primigenius than that is 
from us." If he had possessed the Cro-magnon 




I— I 

9 



V 



14 ! 



x6i 



1 62 FACTS AND FANCIES 

and Mentone skulls at the time when this was 
written, he might well have said immeasurably 
distant from the time of the Elephas primige- 
nius. Professor Broca, who seems by no means 
disinclined to favor a simian origin for men, 
has the following general conclusions, which 
refer to the Cro-magnon skulls : "The great vol- 
ume of the brain, the development of the fron- 
tal region, the fine elliptical profile of the an- 
terior portion of the skull, and the orthogna- 
thous form of the upper facial region, are incon- 
testably evidence of superiority which are met 
with usually only in the civilized races. On the 
other hand, the great breadth of face, the alve- 
olar prognathism, the enormous development 
of the ascending ramus of the lower jaw, the 
extent and roughness of the muscular inser- 
tions, especially of the masticatory muscles, 
give rise to the idea of a violent and brutal 
race." 

He adds that this apparent antithesis, seen 
also in the limbs as well as in the skull, accords 
with the evidence furnished by the associated 
weapons and implements of a rude hunter- 
life, and at the same time of no mean degree 
of taste and skill in carving and other arts 
(see Fig. 9). He might have added that 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 63 

this is precisely the antithesis seen in the 
American tribes, among whom art and taste 
of various kinds, and much that is high and 
spiritual even in thought, coexisted with bar- 
barous modes of life and intense ferocity and 
cruelty. The god and the devil were com- 
bined in these races, but there was nothing 
of the mere brute. 

Riviere remarks, with expressions of sur- 
prise, the same contradictory points in the 
Mentone skeleton. Its grand development 
of brain-case and high facial angle — even 
higher, apparently, than in most of these 
ancient skulls — combined with other charac- 
ters which indicate a low type and barbarous 
modes of life. 

Another point which strikes us in reading 
the descriptions, and which deserves the atten- 
tion of those who have access to the skeletons, 
is the indication which they seem to present 
of an extreme longevity. The massive pro- 
portions of the body, the great development 
of the muscular processes, the extreme wear- 
ing of the teeth among a people who pre- 
dominantly lived on flesh and not on grain, 
the obliteration of the sutures of the skull, 
along with indications of slow ossification of 



164 FACTS AND FANCIES 

the ends of the long bones, point in this direc- 
tion, and seem to indicate a slow maturity and 
great length of life in this most primitive race. 
The picture would be incomplete did we 
not add that in France and Belgium, in the 
immediately succeeding or reindeer age, these 
gigantic and magnificent men seem to have 
been superseded by a feebler race of smaller 
stature and with shorter heads ; so that we 
have, even in these oldest days, the same con- 
trasts so plainly perceptible in the races of the 
North of Europe and the North of America in 
historical times (Figure 10). 

It is further significant that there are some 
indications to show that the larger and nobler 
race was that which inhabited Europe at the 
time of its greatest elevation above the sea 
and greatest horizontal extent, and when its 
fauna included many large quadrupeds now 
extinct. This race of giants was thus in the 
possession of a greater continental area than 
that now existing, and had to contend with 
gigantic brute rivals for the possession of the 
world. It is also not improbable that this 
early race became extinct in Europe in con- 
sequence of the physical changes which oc- 
curred in connection with the subsidence which 



Fig. io. 




Section of the cave of Frontal, in Belgium. {After Dupont.) a, 
limestone: b, deposit of mud of the mammoth age, on which rests a 
bed of gravel, c, and above this there was, in modern times, a mass of 
fallen debris, d, up to the dotted line. On removing this, a hearth was 
found at e, on which were numerous bones of modern animals, the 
remains of funeral feasts. The cave was closed with a flat stone, and 
within were skeletons, stone implements, ornaments, and pottery of the 
"neolithic" age. Under these was undisturbed earth of the palae* 
olithic, or mammoth age. The facts show the succession, in Belgium, 
of palseocosmic or antediluvian men and of neocosmic men allied to 
the Basques or to the Laps, and all this previous to the advent of the 
modern races. 



165 



1 66 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

reduced the land to its present limits, and that 
the dwarfish race which succeeded came in as 
the appropriate accompaniment of a diminished 
land-surface and a less genial climate in the 
early modern period. Both of these races 
are properly palaeolithic, and are supposed to 
antedate the period of polished stone ; but 
this may, to a great extent, be a prejudice of 
collectors, who have arrived at a foregone 
conclusion as to the distinctness of these 
periods (Figure n). Judging from the great 
cranial capacity of the older race and the small 
number of their skeletons found, it would be 
fair to suppose that they represent rude out- 
lying tribes belonging to races which elsewhere 
had attained to greater culture. 

Lastly, both of these old European races 
were Turanian, Mongolian, or American in 
their head-forms and features, as well as in 
their habits, implements, and arts. To illustrate 
this, in so far as the older of the two races is 
concerned, I have carefully compared collec- 
tions of American Indian skulls with casts 
and figures representing the form and di- 
mensions of some of the oldest European 
crania above referred to. Some of the 
American skulls may fairly be compared 



Fig. ii. 




Flint arrow-heads found together in a modern Indian deposit in 
Canada, and showing the coincidence in time of rude and finished 
flint weapons, or that among all savages using chipped flint, the palaeo- 
lithic and neolithic ages are contemporaneous. 



167 



l68 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

in their characters with the Mentone skull, 
and others with those of Cro-magnon, En- 
gis, and Neanderthal ; and so like are some 
of the Huron, Iroquois, and other northern 
American skulls to these ancient European 
relics and others of their type, that it would 
be difficult to affirm that they might not have 
belonged to near relatives. On the other 
hand, the smaller and shorter heads of the 
race of the reindeer age in Europe may be 
compared with the Laps, and with some of the 
more delicately formed Algonquin and Chippe- 
wayan skulls in America. If, therefore, the 
reader desires to realize the probable aspect 
of the men of Cro-magnon, of Mentone, or 
of Engis, I may refer him to modern 
American heads. So permanent is this great 
Turanian race, out of which all the other 
races now extant seem to have been developed, 
in the milder and more hospitable regions of 
the Old World, while in northern Asia and in 
America it has retained to this day its primitive 
characters. 

The reader, reflecting on what he has 
learned from history, may be disposed here 
to ask, Must we suppose Adam to have been 
one of these Turanian men, like old men of 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 69 

Cro-magnon ? In answer, I would say that 
there is no good reason to regard the first 
man as having resembled a Greek Apollo or 
an Adonis. He was probably of sterner and 
more muscular mould. But the gigantic palaeo- 
lithic men of the European caves are more 
probably representatives of that fearful and 
powerful race who filled the antediluvian world 
with violence, and who reappear in postdiluvian 
times as the Anakim and traditional giants, who 
constitute a feature in the early history of so 
many countries. Perhaps nothing is more 
curious in the revelations as to the most 
ancient cave-men than that they confirm the 
old belief that there were 'giants in those 
days.' 

And now let us pause for a moment to 
picture these so-called palaeolithic men. What 
could the old man of Cro-magnon have told 
us had we been able to sit by his hearth and 
listen understandingly to his speech ? — which, 
if we may judge from the form of his palate- 
bones, must have resembled more that of the 
Americans or Mongolians than of any modern 
European people. He had, no doubt, travelled 
far, for to his stalwart limbs a long journey 

through forests and over plains and mountains 
15 



I70 FACTS AND FANCIES 

would be a mere pastime. He may have 
bestridden the wild horse, which seems to 
have abounded at the time in France, and 
he may have launched his canoe on the waters 
of the Atlantic. His experience and memory 
might extend back a century or more, and his 
traditional lore might go back to the times of 
the first mother of our race. Did he live in 
that wide Post-Pliocene continent which ex- 
tended westward through Ireland? Did he 
know and had he visited the nations that lived 
in the valley of the great Gihon, that ran down 
the Mediterranean Valley, or on that nameless 
river which flowed through the Dover Straits ? 
Had he visited or seen from afar the great 
island Atlantis, whose inhabitants could almost 
see in the sunset sky the islands of the blest ? 
Or did he live at a later time, after the Post- 
Pliocene subsidence, and when the land had 
assumed its present form ? In that case he 
could have told us of the great deluge, of the 
huge animals of the antediluvian world — known 
to him only by tradition — and of the diminished 
strength and longevity of men in his compar- 
atively modern days. We can but conjecture 
all this. But, mute though they may be as to 
the details of their lives, the man of Cro- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1/ I 

magnon and his contemporaries are eloquent 
of one great truth, in which they coincide with 
the Americans and with the primitive men of 
all the early ages. They tell us that primitive 
man had the same high cerebral organization 
which he possesses now, and, we may infer, 
the same high intellectual and moral nature, 
fitting him for communion with God and head- 
ship over the lower world. They indicate, 
also, like the Mound-builders, who preceded 
the North American Indian, that man's earlier 
state was the best — that he had been a high 
and noble creature before he became a savage. 
It is not conceivable that their high develop- 
ment of brain and mind could have sponta- 
neously engrafted itself on a mere brutal and 
savage life. These gifts must be remnants 
of a noble organization degraded by moral 
evil. They thus justify the tradition of a 
Golden and Edenic Age, and mutely protest 
against the philosophy of progressive develop- 
ment as applied to man, while they bear wit- 
ness to the identity in all important characters 
of the oldest prehistoric men with that variety 
of our species which is at the present day at 
once the most widely extended and the most 
primitive in its manners and usages. 



172 FACTS AND FANCIES 

Thus it would appear that these earliest 
known men are not specifically distinct from 
ourselves, but are a distinct race, most nearly 
allied to that great Turanian stock which is at 
the present day, and has apparently from the 
earliest historic times been, the most widely 
spread of all. Though rude and uncultured, 
they were not either physically or mentally 
inferior to the average men of to-day, and 
were indeed in several respects men of high 
type, whose great cranial capacity might lead 
us to suppose that their ancestors had recently 
been in a higher state of civilization than them- 
selves. It is, however, possible that this cha- 
racteristic was rather connected with great 
energy and physical development than with 
high mental activity. 

To the hypothesis of evolution, as applied 
to man, these facts evidently oppose great 
difficulties. They show that such modern 
degraded races as the Fuegians or the Tas- 
manians cannot present to us the types of our 
earlier ancestors, since the latter were men 
of a different and higher style. Nor do 
these oldest known men present any approx- 
imation in physical characters to the lower 
animals. Further, we may infer from their 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 73 

works, and from what we know of their beliefs 
and habits, that they were not creatures of 
instinct, but of thought like ourselves, and 
that materialistic doctrines of automatism and 
brain-force without mind would be quite as 
absurd in their application to them as to their 
modern representatives. 

It is not too much to say that, in presence 
of these facts, the spontaneous origin of man 
from inferior animals cannot be held as a 
scientific conclusion. It may be an article 
of faith in authority, or a superstition or an 
hypothesis, but is in no respect a result of 
scientific investigation into the fossil remains 
of man. But if man is not such a product 
of spontaneous evolution, he must have been 
created by a Being having a higher reason 
and a greater power than his own ; and the 
ancestry of the agnostic, and the rational 
powers which he exercises, constitute the best 
refutation of his own doctrine. 

15* 



V. 

NATURE 



AS 



A Manifestation of Mind. 



LECTURE V. 

NATURE AS A MANIFESTATION OF MIND. 

THE subjects already discussed should 
have prepared us to regard nature as 
not a merely fortuitous congeries of matter 
and forces, but as embodying plan, design, 
and contrivance ; and we may now inquire 
as to the character of these, considered as 
possible manifestations of mind in nature. 
The idea that nature is a manifestation of mind, 
is ancient, and probably universal. It proceeds 
naturally from the analogy between the oper- 
ations of nature and those which originate in 
our own will and contrivance. When men 
begin to think more accurately, this idea ac- 
quires a deeper foundation in the conclusion 
that nature, in all its varied manifestations, is 
one vast machine too great and complex for 
us to comprehend, and implying a primary 
energy infinitely beyond that of man ; and 
thus the unity of nature points to one Crea- 
tive Mind. 

177 



178 FACTS AND FANCIES 

Even to savage peoples, in whose minds the 
idea of unity has not germinated, or from 
whose traditions it has been lost, a spiritual 
essence appears to underlie all natural phe- 
nomena, though they may regard this as con- 
sisting of a separate spirit or manitou for 
every material thing. In all the more culti- 
vated races the ideas of natural religion have 
taken more definite forms in their theology 
and philosophy. Dugald Stewart has well ex- 
pressed the more scientific form of this idea 
in two short statements : 

"1. Every effect implies a cause. 

" 2. Every combination of means to an end 
implies intelligence." 

The theistic aspect of the doctrine had, as 
we have seen in a previous lecture, been 
already admirably expressed by Paul in his 
Epistle to the Romans. Writing of what 
every heathen must know of mind in nature, 
he says : " The invisible things of him since 
the creation of the world are clearly seen, 
being perceived through the things that are 
made, even his eternal power and divinity." 
The two things which, according to him, every 
intelligent man must perceive in nature are, 
first, power above and beyond that of man, 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 79 

and, secondly, superhuman intelligence. Even 
Agnostic Evolution cannot wholly divest itself 
of the idea of mind in nature. Its advocates 
continually use terms implying contrivance 
and plan when speaking of nature ; and 
Spencer appears explicitly to admit that we 
cannot divest ourselves of the notion of a 
First Cause. Even those writers who seek 
to shelter themselves under such vague and 
unmeaning statements as that human intel- 
ligence must be potentially present in atoms 
or in the solar energy, are merely attributing 
superhuman power and divinity to atoms and 
forces. 

Nor can they escape by the magisterial de- 
nunciation of such ideas as "anthropomorphic" 
fancies. All science must in this sense be an- 
thropomorphic, for it consists of what nature 
appears to us to be when viewed through the 
medium of our senses, and of what we think 
of nature as so presented to us. The only 
difference is this — that if Agnostic Evolution 
•is true, Science itself only represents a certain 
stage of the development, and can have no 
actual or permanent truth ; while, if the theistic 
view is correct, then the fact that man himself 
belongs to the unity of nature and is in har- 



l8o FACTS AND FANCIES 

mony with its other parts gives us some guaran- 
tee for the absolute truth of scientific facts and 
principles. 

We may now consider more in detail some 
of the aspects under which mind presents itself 
in nature. 

i. It may be maintained that nature is an 
exhibition of regulated and determined power. 
The first impression of nature presented to 
a mind uninitiated in its mysteries is that it is 
a mere conflict of opposing forces ; but so 
soon as we study any natural phenomena in 
detail, we see that this is an error, and that 
everything is balanced in the nicest way by 
the most subtle interactions of matter and 
force. We find also that, while forces are 
mutually convertible and atoms susceptible 
of vast varieties of arrangement, all this is 
determined by fixed law and carried out with 
invariable regularity and constancy. 

The vapor of water, for example, diffused 
in the atmosphere, is condensed by extreme 
cold and falls to the ground in snowflakes. In 
these, particles of water previously kept asun- 
der by heat are united by cohesive force ; and 
the heat has gone on other missions. But 
these particles do not merely unite : they 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. l8l 

geometrize. Like well-drilled soldiers arrang- 
ing themselves in ranks, they form themselves, 
according to regular axes of attraction, in 
lines diverging at an angle of sixty degrees ; 
and thus the snowflakes are hexagonal plates 
and six-rayed stars, the latter often growing 
into very complex shapes, but all based on the 
law of attraction under angles of sixty degrees 
(see Fig. 12). The frost on the window-panes 
observes the same law, and so does every 
crystallization 5f water where it has scope to 
arrange itself in accordance with its own 
geometry. But this law of crystallization gives 
to snow and ice their mechanical properties, 
and is connected with a multitude of adjust- 
ments of water in the solid state to its place 
in nature. The same law, varied in a vast 
number of ways in every distinct substance, 
builds up crystals of all kinds and crystalline 
rocks, and is connected with countless adapta- 
tions of different kinds of matter to mechanical 
and chemical uses in the arts. It is easy to see 
that all this might have been otherwise — nay, 
that it must have been otherwise — but for the 
institution of many and complex laws. 

A lump of coal at first suggests little to ex- 
cite interest or imagination ; but the student of 

16 



1 82 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

its composition and microscopic structure finds 
that it is an accumulation of vegetable matter 
representing the action of the solar light on the 
leaves of trees of the Palaeozoic Age. It thus 
calls up images of these perished forests and 
of the causes concerned in their production and 
growth, and in the accumulation and preserva- 
tion of their buried remains. It further sug- 
gests the many ways in which this solar energy, 
so long sealed up, can be recalled to activity in 
heat, gaslight, steam, and electric light, and how 
remarkably these things have been related to 
the wealth and the civilization of modern na- 
tions. An able writer of the agnostic school, 
in a popular lecture on coal, has his imagination 
so stimulated by these thoughts that he apostro- 
phizes " Nature " as the cunning contriver who 
stored up this buried sunlight by her strange 
and mysterious alchemy, kept it quietly to her- 
self through all the long geological periods 
when reptiles and brute mammals were lords 
of creation, and through those centuries of bar- 
barism when savage men roamed over the pro- 
ductive coal-districts in ignorance of their treas- 
ures, and then revealed her long-hidden stores 
of wealth and comfort to the admiring study of 
science and civilization, and for the benefit of 



Fig. 12. 




Snowflakes copied from nature under the microscope, and serving 
to illustrate the geometrical arrangement of molecules of water in 
crystallizing, a, b, simple stars ; c, d, hexagonal plates ; e, /, rays of 
large and complex star-shaped flakes. The law of arrangement of the 
molecules is that of attraction in the lines of three axes at angles of 
sixty degrees, and the varieties are produced by differences in temper- 
ature and rate of supply of material. 



183 



1 84 FACTS AND FANCIES 

the millions belonging- to densely-peopled and 
progressive nations. It is plain that " Nature " 
in such a connection represents either a poet- 
ical fiction, a superstitious fancy, or an intelli- 
gent Creative Mind. It is further evident that 
such Creative Mind must be in harmony with 
that of man, though vastly greater in its scope 
and grasp in time and space. 

Even the numerical relations observed in 
nature teach the same lesson. The leaves of 
plants are not arranged at random, but in a 
series of curiously-related spirals, differing in 
different plants, but always the same in the 
same species and regulated by definite laws. 
Similar definiteness regulates the ramification of 
plants, which depends primarily on the arrange- 
ment of the leaves. The angle of ramification 
of the veins of the leaf is settled for each 
species of plant ; so are the numbers of parts 
in the flower and the angular arrangement of 
these parts. It is the same in the animal king- 
dom, such numbers as 5, 6, &, 10 being selected 
to determine the parts in particular animals and 
portions of animals. Once settled, these num- 
bers are wonderfully permanent in geological 
time. The first known land reptiles appear in 
the Carboniferous period, and they have nor- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 85 

mally five toes ; these appear in the earliest 
known species in the lowest beds of the Car- 
boniferous. Their predecessors, the fishes, had 
numerous fin-rays ; but when limbs for locomo- 
tion on land were contrived, the number ^ym^ was 
adopted as the typical one. It still persists in 
the five toes and fingers of man himself. From 
these, as is well known, our decimal notation is 
derived. It did not originate in any special fit- 
ness of the number ten, but in the fact that men 
began to reckon by counting their ten fingers. 
Thus the decimal system of arithmetic, with all 
that follows from it, was settled millions of years 
ago, in the Carboniferous period, either by cer- 
tain low-browed and unintelligent batrachians 
or by their Maker. 

2. Nature presents to us very remarkable 
revelations of dissimilar and widely-separated 
matters and forces. I have referred to the nu- 
merical arrangement of the leaves of plants ; 
but the leaf itself, in its structure and func- 
tions, is one of the most remarkable things in 
nature. Composed of layers of loosely-placed 
living cells with air-spaces between them ; en- 
closed above and below with a transparent 
epidermis, the spaces between the cells com- 
municating with the atmosphere without by 

16* 



1 86 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

means of microscopic pores guarded by cun- 
ningly-contrived valves opening or closing 
according to the hygrometric state of the air ; 
connected with the stem of the plant by a 
system of tubes strengthened with spiral fibres 
within, — the structure of the leaf is, mechan- 
ically considered, of extreme beauty and com- 
plexity. But its living functions are still more 
wonderful. Receiving the water from the soil 
with such materials as it brings thence in solu- 
tion, and absorbing carbonic dioxide and am- 
monia from the air, the living protoplasm of 
the leaf-cells has the power of chemically chang- 
ing all these substances, and of producing from 
them those complicated and otherwise inimita- 
ble organic compounds of which the tissues of 
the plant are built up. The force by which 
this is done is that of the solar heat and light, 
both admitted freely into the interior of the 
leaf through the transparent epidermis, and 
therein imprisoned, so as to constitute a pow- 
erful storehouse of evaporation and chemical 
energy. In this way all the materials available 
for the maintenance of life, whether vegetable 
or animal, are produced, and no other structure 
than the living vegetable cell, as it exists in 
the leaf, has the power to effect these miracles 



Fig. 13. 



9Swri noaooaaac* 

I*- 




Section of the leaf of a Cycad, being one of *the most ancient styles 
of leaf of which the structure is known, a, upper epidermis; b, upper 
layer of cells, with grains of chlorophyll ; c, lower layer of cells, with 
chlorophyll ; d, lower epidermis ; e, stomata, or breathing-pores, with 
contractile cells for opening and closing. 



187 



1 88 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

of transmutation. Here, let it be observed, 
we have the vegetable cell placed in relation 
with the system of the plant, with the soil, with 
the atmosphere and its waters, with the distant 
sun itself and the properties of its emitted 
energies. Let it further be observed that, on 
the one hand, the chemistry involved in this is 
of a character altogether different from that 
which applies to inorganic matter, and, on the 
other, the products derived from a very few 
elements embrace all that vast variety of com- 
pounds which we observe in plants and animals, 
and which constitute the material of one of the 
most complex of sciences — that of organic 
chemistry. Finally, these complicated struc- 
tures were produced and all their relations 
set up at a very early geological period. In so 
far as we can judge from their remains and the 
results effected, the leaves of the Palaeozoic 
period were functionally as perfect as their 
modern successors (see Figs. 13, 14). Of 
course, the agnostic evolutionist may, if he 
pleases, attribute all this to fortuitous inter- 
actions of the sun, the atmosphere, and the 
earth, and may provide for what these fail to 
explain by the assumption of potentialities 
equivalent to the things produced. But the 



Fig. 14. 




Foliage from the coal-formation, showing some of the forms of 
leaves instrumental in accumulating the carbon of our coal-beds, by 
their action on the atmosphere under the influence of sunlight. 



190 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

probability of such an hypothesis becomes 
infinitely small when we consider the variety 
and the diversity of things and forces which 
must have conspired to produce the results 
observed, and to maintain them so constantly, 
and yet with so much difference in circum- 
stances and details. It is a relief to turn from 
such bewildering and gratuitous suppositions 
to the theory which supposes a designing 
Creative Mind. 

From the boundless variety of illustrations 
which the animal kingdom presents I may 
select one — the contrivances by means of 
which marine animals are enabled to float or 
balance themselves in the waters. The Pearly 
Nautilus (see Fig. 15) is one of the most famil- 
iar, and also one of the most curious. Its 
coiled shell is divided by partitions into air- 
chambers so proportioned that the buoyancy 
of the air is sufficient to counterpoise in sea- 
water the weight of the animal. There are 
also contrivances by which the density of the 
contained air and of the body of the animal can 
be so modified as slightly to disturb this equi- 
librium, and to enable the creature to rise or 
sink in the waters. It would be tedious to 
describe, without adequate illustrations, all the 



Fig. 15. 




Section of the Pearly Nautilus and its shell, showing that the animal 
occupies only the outer chamber, the others being filled with air and 
acting as a float whose buoyancy can be modified by the action of the 
tube, or siphuncle, passing through the chambers. 



191 



I92 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

machinery connected withr these adjustments. 
It is sufficient for our purpose to know that 
they are provided in such a manner that the 
animal is practically exempted from the opera- 
tion of the force of gravity. In the modern 
seas these provisions are enjoyed by only a 
few species of the genera Nautilus and Spirula; 
but in former geological ages, more numerous, 
as well as larger and more complex, forms 
existed. Further, this contrivance is very old. 
We find in the Orthoceratites and their allies of 
the earliest Silurian formations these arrange- 
ments in their full perfection, and in some 
forms* even more complex than in later types. 
The peculiar contrivances observed in the 
nautilus and its allies are possessed by no other 
mollusks, but there is another group of some- 
what lower grade, that of the Ianthince, or vio- 
let snails, in which flotation is provided for in 
another way (see Fig. 16). In these animals 
the shell is perfectly simple, though light, and 
the floating apparatus consists in a series of 
horny air-vesicles attached to what is termed 
the "foot" of the animal, and which are in- 
creased in number to suit its increasing weight 
as it grows in size. There are some reasons 

* As Piloceras, for example. 



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194 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

to believe that this entirely different contrivance 
is as old in geological time as the chambered 
shell of the nautiloid animals. It was, indeed, 
in all probability, more common and adapted to 
larger animals in the Silurian period than at 
present. 

Another curious instance — not, so far as yet 
known, existing at all in the modern world — is 
that of the remarkable stalked star-fish de- 
scribed by Professor Hall under the name 
Camerocrinus, and whose remains are found 
in the Upper Silurian rocks. The Crinoids, 
or feather-stars, are well-known inhabitants of 
the seas, in both ancient and modern times ; but 
previous to Professor Hall's discovery they 
were known only as animals attached by flex- 
ible stems to the sea-bottom or creeping slowly 
by means of their radiating arms. It was not 
suspected that any of them had committed 
themselves to the mercy of the currents, sus- 
pended from floats. It appears, however, that 
this was actually realized in the Upper Silurian 
period, when certain animals of this group de- 
veloped a hollow calcareous vesicle forming a 
balloon-shaped float, from which they could 
hang suspended in the water and float freely 
(see Fig. 17). So far as known, this remark- 



Fig. 17. 




Camerocrinus, reduced in size (as restored by Hall). This is a 
crinoid, or feather-star, of the Upper Silurian period, floating by 
means of a hollow balloon-shaped structure divided into chambers 
and formed of calcareous plates. 



195 



I96 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

able contrivance was temporary, and probably 
adapted to some peculiarities of the habits and 
food of these animals occurring only in the 
geological period in which they existed. 

Examples of this sort of adjustment are found 
in other types of animal life. In the beautiful 
Portuguese man-of-war (Physalia) and its allies 
flotation is provided for by membranous or car- 
tilaginous sacs or vesicles filled with air, and 
which are the common support of numerous 
individuals which hang from them (see Fig. 18). 
In some allied creatures the buoyancy required 
is secured by little vesicles filled with oil se- 
creted by the animals themselves. 

In each of these cases we have a skilful adap- 
tation of means to ends. The float is so con- 
structed as to avail itself of the properties of 
gases and liquids, and the apparatus is framed 
on the most scientific principles and in the most 
artistic manner. That this apparatus grows and 
is not mechanically put together, and that in 
each case the instincts and the habits of the 
animal have been correlated with it, can scarce- 
ly be held by the most obtuse intellect to in- 
validate the evidence of intelligent design. 

3. Structures apparently the most simple, and 
often heedlessly spoken of as if they involved 



Fig. i 8. 




The Physalia, or " Portuguese man-of-war " of the Atlantic, being a 
colony of animals provided with long tentacles used as fishing-lines, 
and hanging from a membranous float with a crest, or " sail," on the 
top, and a pointed end which, being turned from side to side, serves 
as a rudder. 



17* 



197 



I98 FACTS AND FANCIES 

no complexity, prove, on examination, to be in- 
tricate and complex almost beyond conception. 
In nothing, perhaps, is this better seen than in 
that- much-abused protoplasm which has been 
made to do duty for God in the origination of 
life, but which is itself a most laboriously man- 
ufactured material. Albumen, or white of egg 
— which is otherwise named " protoplasm " — is 
a very complicated substance both chemically 
and in its molecular arrangements, and when 
endowed with life it presents properties alto- 
gether inscrutable. It is easy to say that the 
protoplasm of an egg or of some humble an- 
imalcule or microscopic embryo is little more 
than a mass of structureless jelly; yet, in the 
case of the embryo, a microscopic dot of this 
apparently structurele'ss jelly must contain all 
the parts of the future animal, however com- 
plex ; but how we may never know, and cer- 
tainly cannot yet comprehend. 

There are minute animalcules belonging to 
the group of flagellate Infusoria, some of which, 
under ordinary microscopic powers, appear 
merely as moving specks, and show their act- 
ual structures only under powers of two thou- 
sand diameters, or more ; yet these animals can 
be seen to have an outer skin and an inner 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 1 99 

mass, to have pulsating sacs and reproductive 
organs, and threadlike flagella wherewith to 
swim. Their eggs are, of course, much small- 
er than themselves — so much so that some of 
them are probably invisible under the highest 
powers yet employed. Each of them, however, 
is potentially an animal, with all its parts rep- 
resented structurally in some way. Nor need 
we wonder at this. It has been calculated that 
a speck scarcely visible under the most power- 
ful microscope may contain two million four 
hundred thousand molecules of protoplasm.* 
If each of these molecules were a brick, there 
would be enough of them to build a terrace of 
twenty-five good dwelling-houses. But this is 
supposing them to be all alike ; whereas we 
know that the molecules of albumen are capa- 
ble of being of very various kinds. Each of 
these molecules really contains eight hundred 
and eighty-two ultimate atoms — namely, four 
hundred of carbon, three hundred and ten of 
hydrogen, one hundred and twenty of oxygen, 
fifty of nitrogen, and two of sulphur and phos- 
phorus. Now, we know that these atoms may 
be differently arranged in different molecules, 

* I am indebted for these figures to my friend Dr, S, P, Robins of 

Montreal. 



200 FACTS AND FANCIES 

producing considerable difference of proper- 
ties. Let us try, then, to calculate of how 
many differences of arrangement the atoms of 
one molecule of protoplasm are susceptible, 
and then to calculate of how many, changes 
these different assemblages are capable in a 
microscopic dot composed of two million four 
hundred thousand of them. It is scarcely neces- 
sary to say that such a calculation, in the multi- 
tudes of possibilities involved, transcends human 
powers of imagination ; yet it answers questions 
of mechanical and chemical grouping merely, 
without any reference to the additional mystery 
of life. Let it be observed that this vastly com- 
plex material is assumed as if there were noth- 
ing remarkable in it, by many of those theorists 
who plausibly explain to us the spontaneous 
origin of living things. But nature, in arrang- 
ing all the parts of a complicated animal before- 
hand in an apparently structureless microsco- 
pic ovum, has all these vast numbers to deal with 
in working out the exact result ; and this not in 
one case merely, but in multitudes of cases in- 
volving the most varied combinations. We can 
scarcely suppose the atoms themselves to have 
the power of thus unerringly marshalling them- 
selves to work out the structures of organisms 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 201 

infinitely varied, yet all alike after their kinds. 
If not, then " Nature " must be a goddess gifted 
with superhuman powers of calculation and mar- 
vellous deftness in arranging invisible atoms. 

4. The beauty of form, proportion, and color- 
ing that abounds in nature affords evidence of 
mind. Herculean efforts have been made by 
modern evolutionists to eliminate altogether 
the idea of beauty from nature, by theories of 
sexual selection and the like, and to persuade 
us that beauty is merely utility in disguise, and 
even then only an accidental coincidence be- 
tween our perceptions and certain external 
things. But in no part of their argument 
have they more signally failed in accounting 
for the observed facts, and in no part have they 
more seriously outraged the common sense 
and natural taste of men. In point of fact, 
we have here one of those great correlations 
belonging to the unity of nature — that indis- 
soluble connection which has been established 
between the senses and the aesthetic senti- 
ments of man and certain things in the exter- 
nal world. But there is more in beauty than 
this merely anthropological relation. Certain 
forms, for example, adopted in the skeletons 
of the lower animals are necessarily beautiful 



202 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

because of their geometrical proportions. Cer- 
tain styles of coloring are necessarily beautiful 
because of harmonies and contrasts which 
depend on the essential properties of the 
waves of light. Beauty is thus in a great 
measure independent of the taste of the spec- 
tator. It is also independent of mere utility, 
since, even if we admit that all these combina- 
tions of forms, motions, and colors which we 
call beautiful are also useful, it is easy to 
perceive that the end could often be attained 
without the beauty. 

It is a curious fact that some of the simplest 
animals — as, for example, sponges and Foramin- 
ifera— are furnished with the most beautiful 
skeletons. Nothing can exceed the beauty 
of form and proportions in the shells of some 
Foraminifera and Polycistina, or in the skele- 
tons of some silicious sponges (see Fig. 19), 
while it is obvious that these humble creatures, 
without brains and external senses, can neither 
contrive nor appreciate the beauty with which 
they are clothed. Further, some of these 
structures are very old geologically. The 
sponge whose skeleton is known as " Venus's 
flower-basket" produces a structure of inter- 
woven silicious threads exquisite in its beauty 



Fig. 19. 




Magnified portion of a silicious sponge, showing the principle of 
construction of the hexactinellid sponges, with six-rayed spicules 
joined together and strengthened with diagonal braces. (After ZitteL) 



203 



204 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

and perfect in its mechanical arrangements 
for strength (Figure 20). Even in the old 
Cambrian rocks there are remains of sponges 
which seem already to have practically solved 
the geometrical problems involved in the pro- 
duction of these wonderful skeletons ; and with 
a Chinese-like persistency, having attained to 
perfection, they have adhered to it throughout 
geological time. Nor is there anything of 
mere inorganic crystallization in this. The sil- 
ica of which the skeletons are made is colloidal, 
not crystalline, and the forms themselves have 
no relations to the crystalline axes of silica. 
Such illustrations might be multiplied to any 
extent, and apply to all the beauties of form, 
structure, and coloring which abound around 
us and far excel our artificial imitations of 
them. 

5. The instincts of the lower animals imply 
a Higher Intelligence. Instinct, in the theistic 
view of nature, can be nothing less than a 
divine inspiration placing the animal in relation 
with other things and processes, often of the 
most complex character, and which it could 
by no means have devised for itself. Further, 
instinct is in its very essence a thing unimprov- 
able. Like the laws of nature, it operates 



Fig. 20. 




Euplectella, or " Venus's flower-basket," a silicious sponge, showing 
its general form. (Reduced, from Am. Naturalist, vol. iv.) 



18 



205 



206 FACTS AND FANCIES 

invariably ; and if diminished or changed, it 
would prove useless for its purpose. It is 
not, like human inventions, slowly perfected 
under the influence of thought and imagination, 
and laboriously taught by each generation to 
its successors : it is inherited by each genera- 
tion in all its perfection, and from the first 
goes directly to its end as if it were a merely 
physical cause. 

The favorite explanation o{ instinct from 
the side of Agnostic Evolution is that it orig- 
inated in the struggle for existence of some 
previous generation, and was then perpetuated 
as an inheritance. But, like most of the other 
explanations of this school, this quietly takes 
for granted what should be proved. That 
instinct is hereditary is evident ; but the ques- 
tion is, How did it begin ? and to say simply 
that it did begin at some former period is to 
tell us nothing. From a scientific point of 
view, the invariable operation of any natural 
law affords no evidence of any gradual or 
sudden origination of it at any point of past 
time ; and when such law is connected with a 
complicated organism and various other laws 
and processes of the external world, the sup- 
position of its slowly arising from nothing 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 2QJ 

through many generations of animals becomes 
too intricate to be credible. Instinct must have 
originated in a perfect condition, and with the 
organism and its environment already estab- 
lished. I may borrow here an apposite illus- 
tration from recent papers on the unity of 
nature by the Duke of Argyll, which deserve 
careful study by any one who values common- 
sense views of this subject. The example 
which I select is that of the action of a young 
merganser in its effort to elude pursuit : 

" On a secluded lake in one of the Hebrides, 
I observed a dun-diver, or female of the red- 
breasted merganser {Mergus serrator)^ with 
her brood of young ducklings. On giving 
chase in the boat we soon found that the 
young, although not above a fortnight old, 
had such extraordinary powers of swimming and 
diving that it was almost impossible to capture 
them. The distance they went under water, 
and the unexpected places in which they 
emerged, baffled all our efforts for a consider- 
able time. At last one of the brood made 
for the shore, with the object of hiding among 
the Q-rass and heather which fringed the margin 
of the lake. We pursued it as closely as we 
could ; but when the little bird gained the 



208 FACTS AND FANCIES 

shore, our boat was still about twenty yards 
off. Long drought had left a broad margin 
of small flat stones and mud between the 
water and the usual bank. I saw the little 
bird run up about a couple of yards from the 
water, and then suddenly disappear. Knowing 
what was likely to be enacted, I kept my eye 
fixed on the spot; and when the boat was 
run upon the beach, I proceeded to find and 
pick up the chick. But, on reaching the place 
of disappearance, no sign of the young mer- 
ganser was to be seen. The closest scrutiny, 
with the certain knowledge that it was there, 
failed to enable me to detect it. Proceeding 
cautiously forward, I soon became convinced 
that I had already overshot the mark ; and, 
on turning round, it was only to see the bird 
rise like an apparition from the stones and, 
dashing past the stranded boat, regain the 
lake, where, having now recovered its wind, 
it instantly dived and disappeared. The tac- 
tical skill of the whole of this manoeuvre, and 
the success with which it was executed, were 
greeted with loud cheers from the whole party ; 
and our admiration was not diminished when 
we remembered that, some two weeks before 
that time, the little performer had been coiled 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 209 

up inside the shell of an egg, and that about 
a month before it was apparently nothing but 
a mass of albumen and of fatty oils." 

On this the duke very properly remarks that 
any idea of training and experience is absolute- 
ly excluded, because it " assumes the pre-exist- 
ence of the very powers for which it professes 
to account." He then turns to the idea that 
animals are merely automata or " machines." 
Here it is to be observed that the essential 
idea of a machine is twofold. First, it is a 
merely mechanical structure put together to 
do certain things ; secondly, it must be related 
to a contriver and constructor. If we think 
proper to call the young merganser a machine, 
we must admit both of these characters, more 
especially as the bird is in every way a more 
marvellous machine than any of human con- 
struction. He concludes his notice of this case 
with the following suggestive words : 

" This is a method of escape which cannot be 
resorted to successfully except by birds whose 
coloring is adapted to the purpose by a close 
assimilation with the coloring of surrounding 
objects. The old bird would not have been 
concealed on the same ground, and would 
never itself resort to the same method of es- 

18 * 



2IO FACTS AND FANCIES 

cape. The young, therefore, cannot have been 
instructed in it by the method of example. But 
the small size of the chick, together with its ob- 
scure and curiously-mottled coloring, are spe- 
cially adapted to this mode of concealment. 
The young of all birds which breed upon the 
ground are provided with a garment in such 
perfect harmony with surrounding effects of 
light as to render this manoeuvre easy. It 
depends, however, wholly for its success upon 
absolute stillness. The slightest motion at once 
attracts the eye of any enemy which is search- 
ing for the young. And this absolute stillness 
must be preserved amidst all the emotions of 
fear and terror which the close approach of the 
object of alarm must, and obviously does, in- 
spire. Whence comes this splendid, even if it 
be unconscious, faith in the sufficiency of a 
defence which it must require such nerve and 
strength of will to practise ? No movement, 
not even the slightest, though the enemy should 
seem about to trample on it, — such is the ter- 
rible requirement of nature, and by the child 
of nature implicitly obeyed. Here, again, be- 
yond all question, we have an instinct as much 
born with the creature as the harmonious tint- 
ing of its plumage, the external furnishing be- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 2 1 1 

ing inseparably united with the internal fur- 
nishing of mind which enables the little crea- 
ture in very truth to 'walk by faith, and not 
by sight.' Is this automatism ? Is this machi- 
nery ? Yes, undoubtedly, in the sense explained 
before — that the instinct has been given to the 
bird in precisely the same sense in which its 
structure has been given to it ; so that anterior 
to all experience, and without the aid of in- 
struction or of example, it is inspired to act in 
this manner on the appropriate occasion aris- 
ing." 

Lastly, the reason of man himself is an actual 
illustration of mind in nature. Here we raise a 
question which should perhaps have been con- 
sidered earlier : Is man himself actually a part 
of what we call nature ? We are so accustomed 
to the distinction between things natural and 
things artificial that we are liable to overlook 
this essential question. Is nature the universe 
outside of us, containing the things that we 
study and which constitute our environment? 
Are we elevated on a pedestal, so to speak, 
above nature? or, on the other hand, does na- 
ture include man himself? In that haze or fog 
of ideas which environs modern evolutionism, 
it is not wonderful that this question escapes 



212 FACTS AND FANCIES 

notice, and that the most contradictory utter- 
ances are given forth. Tyndall — by no means 
the most foggy of the agnostics — may afford 
an instance. He remarks respecting the phil- 
osophers of antiquity : * " The experiences which 
formed the weft and woof of their theories were 
drawn, not from the study of nature, but from 
that which lay much closer to them — the ob- 
servation of man. . . . Their theories accord- 
ingly took an anthropomorphic form." Here 
we see that in the view of the writer man is 
distinct from and outside of nature, and so much 
out of harmony with it that the observation of 
him leads to false conclusions, stigmatized, ac- 
cordingly, as " anthropomorphic." In this case 
man must be supernatural, and preternatural as 
well. But it is Tyndall's precise object to show 
us that there is nothing supernatural either in 
man or elsewhere. The contradiction is an in- 
structive example of the delusions which some- 
times pass for science. 

If, with Tyndall, we are to place man outside 
of nature, then the human mind at once be- 
comes to us a supernatural intelligence. But 
truth forbids such a conclusion. The reason 
of man, however beyond the intelligence of 

* Belfast Address. 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 213 

lower animals, so harmonizes with natural laws 
that it is evidently a part of the great unity of 
nature, and we can no more dissociate the mind 
of man from nature than from his own animal 
body. If we could do so, we might have ground 
to distrust the validity of all our conclusions as 
to nature, and thus to cut away the foundations 
of science; and what remained of philosophy 
and religion would be preternatural, in the bad 
sense of destroying the unity of nature and im- 
perilling our confidence in the unity of the Cre- 
ator himself. 

In connection with this we have cause to con- 
sider the true meaning and use of two terms 
often hurled at theists as weapons of attack. 

The word " anthropomorphic " is a term of 
reproach for our interpreting nature in har- 
mony with our own thoughts or our own con- 
stitution. But if man is a part of nature, he 
must be a competent interpreter of it. If he 
is not a part of nature, then, whether we make 
him godlike or a demon, we have, in him, to 
deal with something supernatural. It is true 
that in a certain sense he is above nature, but 
not in any sense which so dissociates him from 
it as to prevent him from rationally thinking of 
it in his own thoughts and speaking of it in his 



214 FACTS AND FANCIES 

own form of words. So true is this that no 
writers are more anthropomorphic in their 
modes of speaking of nature than those who 
most strongly denounce anthropomorphism. 
Even the celebrated definition of life by Her- 
bert Spencer cannot escape this tincture. 
"Life," he says, "is the continuous adjustment 
of internal to external conditions." Now, the 
essence of this definition lies in the word " ad- 
justment." But to adjust is to arrange, adapt, 
or fit — all purely human and intelligent actions. 
Nothing, therefore, could be more anthropo- 
morphic than such a statement. As theists we 
need not complain of this, but surely as agnos- 
tics we should decidedly object to it. 

The other word whose meaning it is neces- 
sary to consider is "supernatural," which it 
might be well, perhaps, to follow the example 
of the New Testament in avoiding altogether 
as a misleading term. If by supernatural we 
mean something outside of and above nature 
and natural law, there is really no such thing 
in the universe. There may be that which is 
" spiritual," as distinguished from that which is 
natural in the material sense ; but the spiritual 
has its own laws, which are not in conflict with 
those of the natural. Even God cannot in this 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 2 I 5 

sense be said to be supernatural, since his will 
is necessarily in conformity with natural law. 
Yet this absurd sense of the term " supernat- 
ural " is constantly forced upon us by so-called 
advanced thinkers, and employed as an argu- 
ment against theism. The only true sense in 
which any being or any thing can be said to be 
supernatural is that in which we use it with ref- 
erence to the original creation of matter and 
force and the institution of natural law. The 
power which can do these things is above na- 
ture, but not outside of it ; for matter, energy, 
and law must be included in, and in harmony 
with, the Creative Will. 

To return from this digression. If man is a 
part of nature, we can see how it is that he con- 
forms to natural law, not merely in his bodily 
organization and capabilities, but in his mind 
and habits of thought, so that he can compre- 
hend nature and employ it for his purposes. 
Even his moral and his religious ideas must in 
this case be conformed to his conditions of ex- 
istence as a part of nature. We have here 
also the surest guarantee of the correctness of 
our conclusions respecting the laws of nature. 
In like manner, there is here a sense in which 
man is above nature, because he is placed at the 



2l6 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

head of it. In another sense he is inferior to 
the aggregate of nature, because, as Agassiz 
well puts it, there is in the universe a " wealth 
of endowment of the most comprehensive men- 
tal manifestations which man can never fully 
comprehend." 

Still further, if the universe has been created, 
then, just as its laws must be in harmony with 
the will of the Creator, so must our mental con- 
stitution ; and man, as a reasoning and con- 
scious being, must be made in the image of his 
Maker. If we discard the idea of an intelligent 
Creator, then mind and all its powers must be 
potentially in the atoms of matter or in the 
forces which move them ; but this is a mere 
form of words signifying nothing, or, if it has 
any significance, this is contrary to science, 
since it bestows on matter properties which 
experiment does not show it to possess. Thus 
the existence of man is not only a positive 
proof of the presence of mind in nature, but 
affords the strongest possible proof of a higher 
Creative Mind, from which that of man ema- 
nates. The power which originated and sus- 
tains the universe must be at least as much 
greater and more intelligent than man as the 
universe is greater than man in the pt)wer and 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 21*] 

the contrivance which it indicates. Thus we 
return to the Pauline idea — that the power and 
the divinity of the Creator are shown by the 
things he has made. Legitimate science can 
say nothing more, and can say nothing less. 

19 



VI. 

Science and Revelation 



LECTURE VI. 

SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 

THUS far we have proceeded solely on 
scientific grounds, and have seen that 
Monism and Agnosticism fail to account for 
nature. We may therefore feel ourselves jus- 
tified in assuming, as the only promising solu- 
tion of the enigma of existence, the being 
of a Divine Creator. But this does not wholly 
exhaust the relations of science to religion. 
When Science has led us into the presence of 
the Creator, she has brought us to the thresh- 
old of religion, and there she suggests the 
possibility that the spirit of man may have 
other relations with God beyond those estab- 
lished by merely physical law. Science may 
venture to say : " If all nature expresses the 
will of the Creator as carried out in his laws, 
if the instinct of lower animals is an inspira- 
tion of God, should we not expect that there 
will be laws of a higher order regulating the 
free moral nature of man, and that there will 

19 * 221 



222 FACTS AND FANCIES 

be possibilities of the reason of man communi- 
cating with, or receiving aid from, the Supreme 
Intelligence ?" Science undoubtedly suggests 
this much to our reason, and the suggestion 
has commended itself to most of the greater 
and clearer minds that have studied nature, 
whatever their religious beliefs or their want 
of them. 

It may thus be allowable for us, without 
encroaching on the domain of theology, to 
inquire to what extent scientific principles and 
scientific habits of thought agree with or di- 
verge from the religious beliefs of men. I do 
not propose to enter here into the inquiry as 
to the accordance of the Bible with the earth's 
geological history, or that of its representa- 
tions of nature with the facts as held by 
science. These subjects I have fully discussed 
in other works, which are sufficiently access- 
ible.* I shall merely refer to certain general 
relations of science to the probability of a 
divine revelation, and to the character of such 
revelation. 

As to what is termed natural religion, enough 
has already been said. If nature testifies to the 

* More especially in The Origin of the World (London and New 
York, 1877). 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 223 

being of God, and if the reason and the con- 
science implanted in man, "accusing and ex- 
cusing" one another, constitute a law of God 
within him, regulating in some degree his 
relations to God and to his fellow-men, we 
have a sufficient basis for the natural religion 
which more or less actuates the conduct of 
every human being. The case is different 
with revealed religion. Here we have an ap- 
parent interference on the part of the Creator 
with his own work, an additional intervention 
in one department to effect results which else- 
where are worked out by the ordinary opera- 
tion of natural law. In revelation, therefore, 
we may have something quite out of the ordi- 
nary course of nature. On the other hand, it is 
possible that even here we may have something 
more in harmony with natural laws than at first 
sight appears. 

It cannot truly be said that a revelation from 
God to man is improbable from the point of 
view of science. Physical laws and brute in- 
stincts are in their nature unvarying, and nei- 
ther require nor admit of intervention. But 
the reason and the will of free agents are in 
this respect different. Though necessarily un- 
der law, they can judge and decide between 



224 FACTS AND FANCIES 

one law and another, and can even evade or 
counteract one law by employing another, or 
can resolve to be disobedient. Rational free 
agents may thus enter into courses not in har- 
mony with their own interests or their relations 
to their surroundings. Hence, so soon as it 
pleased God to introduce in any part of the 
universe a free rational will gifted with certain 
powers over lower nature, only two courses 
were possible : either God must leave such free 
agent wholly to his own devices, making him a 
god on a small scale, and so far practically ab- 
dicating in his favor, or he must place him un- 
der some law, and this not of the nature of 
mere physical compulsion — which, on the hy- 
pothesis, would be inadmissible — but in the na- 
ture of requirements addressed to his reason 
and his conscience. Hence we might infer a 
priori the probability of some sort of communi- 
cation between God and man. Further, did 
we find such rational creature beginning, on his 
introduction into the world, to mar the face of 
nature, to inflict unnecessary suffering or injury 
on lower creatures or on members of his own 
species, to disregard the moral instincts im- 
planted in him, or to disown the God who had 
created him, we should still more distinctly per- 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 225 

ceive the need of revelation. This would in 
such case be no more at variance with science 
or with natural law than the education given by 
wise parents to their children, or the laws pro- 
mulgated by a wise government for the guidance 
of its subjects, both of which are, and are in- 
tended to be, interventions affecting the ordi- 
nary course of affairs. 

Of necessity, all this proceeds on the suppo- 
sition that there is a God. But in certain dis- 
cussions now prevalent as to the " orgin of re- 
ligion," it is customary quietly to assume that 
there is no God to be known, and conse- 
quently that religion must be a mere gratuitous 
invention of man. It is not too much to say, 
however, that any scientific conception of the 
unity of nature and of man's place in it must 
forbid our making atheistic assumptions. If 
man were a mere product of blind, unintelli- 
gent chance, the idea of a God was not likely 
ever to have occurred to him, still less to have 
become the common property of all races of 
men. In like manner, there is no scientific 
basis for the assumption that man originated 
in a low and bestial type, and that his religion 
developed itself by degrees from the instincts 
of lower animals, from which man is supposed 



226 FACTS AND FANCIES 

to have originated. Such suppositions are un- 
scientific (i) because no ancient remains of such 
low forms of man are known ; (2) because the 
lowest types of man now extant can be proved 
to be degraded descendants of higher types ; 
(3) because, if man had originated in a low 
condition, this would not have diminished the 
probability of a divine revelation being given 
to promote his elevation. 

On the other hand, it is a sad reality that 
man tends to sink from high ideal morality and 
reason into debasing vices and gross' supersti- 
tions that are not natural, but which, on the 
contrary, place him at variance with natural as 
well as with moral law. Thus the actual and 
the possible debasement of man, instead, of 
proving his bestial origin, only increases the 
need of a divine revelation for his improve-- 
ment. 

But, supposing the need of a revelation to 
be admitted, other questions might arise as to 
its mode. Here the anticipations of science 
would be guided by the analogy of nature. 
We should suppose that the revelation would 
be made through the medium of the beings it 
was intended to affect. It would be a revela- 
tion impressed on human minds and expressed 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 227 

in human language. It might be in the form 
of laws with penalties attached, or in that of 
persuasions addressed to the reason and the 
sentiments. It would probably be gradual and 
progressive — at first simple, and later more 
complex and complete. It would thus become 
historical, and would be related to the stages 
of that progress which it was intended to pro- 
mote. It would necessarily be incomplete, more 
especially in its earlier portions, and it would 
always be under the necessity of more or less 
rudely representing divine and heavenly things 
by earthly figures. Being human in its medium, 
it would have the characteristics and the idio- 
syncrasies of man to a certain extent, except in 
so far as it might please God to communicate it 
► directly through a perfect humanity identified 
. with divinity, or through higher and more per- 
fect intelligences than man. 

We should further -expect that such revela- 
tion would not conflict with what is good in 
natural religion or in the natural emotions and 
sentiments of man ; that it would not contradict 
natural facts or laws ; and that it would take 
advantage of the familiar knowledge of man- 
kind in order to illustrate such higher spiritual 
truths as cannot be expressed in human Ian- 



228 FACTS AND FANCIES 

guage. Such a revelation would of necessity 
require that we should receive it in faith, but 
faith resting on evidence derived from things 
known, and from the analogy of the revelation 
itself with what God reveals in nature. It 
would be no valid objection to such a revela- 
tion to say that it is anthropomorphic, since, 
in the nature of the case, it must come through 
man and be suited to man ; nor would it be any 
valid objection that it is figurative, for truth as 
to spiritual realities must always be expressed 
in terms of known phenomena of the natural 
world. 

It has been objected, though not on behalf 
of science, that such a revelation, if it related 
to things discoverable by man, would be useless, 
while, if it related to things not discoverable, it 
could not be understood. This is, however, a 
mere play upon words, and reminds one of 
the doctrine attributed to the Arabian caliph 
with reference to the Alexandrian Library: If 
its books contain what is written in the Koran, 
they are useless ; if anything different, they are 
injurious ; therefore let them be destroyed. It 
would indeed be subversive of all education, 
human as well as divine ; for the essence of this 
is to take advantage of what the pupil knows, 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 229 

and to build on it acquirements which, unaided, 
he could not have attained. 

But, though all may agree as to the possi- 
bility, or even the probability, of a revelation, 
many may dissent from particular dogmas con- 
tained in or implied by the particular form of 
revelation in which Christians believe. It is 
true that this dissent is based, not so much on 
science as on alleged opposition to human sen- 
timents ; but it is more or less supposed to be 
reinforced by scientific facts and laws. Of doc- 
trines supposed to be objectionable from these 
points of view, I may name the reality of mir- 
acles and of prophecy ; the efficacy of prayer 
and of atonement or sacrifice ; and the perma- 
nence of the consequences of sin. Admitting 
that these doctrines are not original discoveries 
of man, but revealed to him, and that they are 
not founded on science, it may nevertheless be 
easily shown that they are in harmony with the 
analogy of nature in a greater degree than 
either their friends or their opponents usually 
suppose. 

Miracles — or " signs," as they are more prop- 
erly called in the New Testament — are some- 
times stated to imply suspension of natural 

law. If they were such, and were alleged to 

20 



230 FACTS AND FANCIES 

be produced by any power short of that of the 
Lawmaker himself, they would be incredible ; 
and if asserted to be by his power, they would 
be so far incredible as implying changeableness, 
and therefore imperfection. It may be affirmed, 
however, of the miracles recorded in Scripture, 
that they do not require suspension of natu- 
ral laws, but merely modifications of the opera- 
tion and peculiar interactions of these. Many 
of them, indeed, profess to be merely unusual 
natural effects arranged for special purposes, 
and depending for their miraculous character 
on their appositeness in time to certain circum- 
stances. This is the case, for instance, with 
the plagues of Egypt, the crossing of the Red 
Sea, and the supply of quails to the Israelites. 
Miracles, whether performed as attestations of 
revelation or as works of mercy or of judg- 
ment, belong to the domain of natural law, but 
to those operations of it which are beyond hu- 
man control or foresight. Their nature in this 
respect we can understand by considering the 
many operations possible to civilized men which 
may appear miraculous to a savage, and which, 
from his point of view, may be amply sufficient 
as evidence of the superior knowledge and 
power of him who performs them. That one 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 23 1 

man should be able instantaneously to trans- 
mit his thoughts to another situated a thousand 
miles away was, until the invention of the elec- 
tric telegraph, impossible. The actual perform- 
ance of such an operation would have been as 
much a miracle as the communication of thought 
from one planet to another would be now. But 
if man can thus work miracles, why should not 
the Almighty do so, when higher moral ends 
are to be served by apparent interference with 
the ordinary course of matter and force ? Ad- 
mitting the existence of God, physical science 
can have nothing to say against miracles. On 
the contrary, it can assure us of the probability 
that if God reveals himself to us at all by nat- 
ural means, such revelation will probably be 
miraculous. 

If the possibility of God communicating with 
his rational creatures be conceded, then the ob- 
jections taken to prophecy lose all value. If 
anything known to God and unknown to man 
can be revealed, things past and future may be 
revealed as well as things present. Science 
abounds in prophecy. All through the geolog- 
ical history there have been prophetic types, 
mute witnesses to coming facts. Minute dis- 
turbances of heavenly bodies, altogether inap- 



232 FACTS AND FANCIES 

preciable by the ordinary observer, enable the 
astronomer to predict the discovery of new 
planets. A line in a spectrum, without signifi- 
cance to the uninitiated, foretells a new element. 
The merest fragment, sufficient only for micro- 
scopic examination, enables the palaeontologist 
to describe to incredulous auditors some organ- 
ism altogether unknown in its entire structures. 
What possible reason can there be for exclud- 
ing such indications of the past and the future 
from a revelation made by him who knows per- 
fectly the end from the beginning, and to whom 
the future results of human actions to the end 
of time must be as evident as the simplest train 
of causes and effects is to us? It is Huxley, 
I think, who says that if the laws affecting hu- 
man conduct were fully known to us, it would 
have been possible to calculate a thousand years 
aeo the exact state of affairs in Britain at this 
moment. Probably such a calculation might be 
too complicated for us, even if the data were 
given ; but it cannot be too complicated for 
the Divine Mind, and possibly might even 
be mastered by some intelligences in the 
universe- subject to God, but higher than 
man. 

That there should be suffering at all in the 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 233 

universe is, no doubt, a mysterious thing ; but 
the fact is evident, and certain benefits which 
flow from it are also evident. Indeed, we fail 
to see how a world of sentient beings could 
continue to exist, unless the penalty of suffer- 
ing were attached to natural law. Further, all 
such penalties are, in consequence of the per- 
manence of matter and the conservation of 
force, necessarily permanent, unless in cases 
where some reaction sets in under the influence 
of some other law or force than that which 
brings the penalty. Even in this case, the effect 
of any violation of any natural law is eternal 
and infinite. No sane man doubts this in the 
case of what may be called sins against nat- 
ural laws ; but many, with strange inconsistency, 
doubt and disbelieve it in the higher domain of 
morals. If we" were for a moment to admit 
the materialist's doctrine that appetites, pas- 
sions, and sentiments are merely effects of phys- 
ical changes in nerve-cells, then we should be 
shut up to the conclusion that the effects of any 
derangement of these must be perpetual and 
coextensive with the universe. Why should it 
be otherwise in things belonging to the domains 
of reason and conscience ? Further, if natural 

laws are the expression of the will of the Cre- 
20 * 



234 FACTS AND FANCIES 

ator, and if these unfailingly assert themselves, 
and must do so, in order to the permanence of 
the material universe, would not analogy teach 
that, unless the Supreme Being is wholly bound 
up in material processes, and is altogether in- 
different to moral considerations, the same reg- 
ularity and constancy must prevail in the spirit- 
ual world ? 

This question is closely connected with the 
ideas of sacrifice and atonement. Nothing is 
more certain in physics than that action and re- 
action are equal, and that no effect can be pro- 
duced without an adequate cause. It results 
from this that every action must involve a cor- 
responding expenditure of matter and force. 
Anything else would be pure magic ; which, we 
know, is nonsense. Thus every intervention 
on behalf of others must imply a correspond- 
ing sacrifice. We cannot raise a fallen child 
or aid the poor or the hungry without a sac- 
rifice of power or means proportioned to the 
result. So, in the moral world, degradation 
cannot be remedied nor punishment averted 
without corresponding sacrifice; and this, it may 
be, on the part of those who are in no degree 
blameworthy. If men have fallen into moral 
evil and God proposes to elevate them from 



IN MODERN SCIENCE. 235 

this condition, this must be done by some cor- 
responding expenditure of force, else we have 
one of those miracles which would imply a sub- 
version of law of the most portentous kind. 
The moral stimulus given by the sacrifice itself 
is a secondary consideration to this great law 
of equivalency of cause and effect. There is, 
therefore, a perfect conformity to natural anal- 
ogy in the Christian idea of the substitution of 
the pure and perfect Man for the sinner, as well 
as in that of the putting forth of the divine 
power manifested in him to raise and restore 
the fallen. 

The efficacy of prayer is one of the last 
things that a scientific naturalist should ques- 
tion, if he is at the same time a theist. Prayer 
is itself one of the laws of nature, and one of 
those that show in the finest way how higher 
laws override and modify those that are lower. 
The young ravens, we are told, cry to God ; and 
so they literally do ; and their cry is answered, 
for the parent-ravens, cruel and voracious, un- 
der the impulse of a God-given instinct range 
over land and water and exhaust every energy 
that they may satisfy that cry. The bleat of 
the lamb will not only meet with response from 
the mother-ewe, but will even exercise a physi- 



236 FACTS AND FANCIES 

ological effect in promoting- the secretion of 
milk in her udder. The mother who hears the 
cry of her child, crushed under some weighty 
thing which has fallen on it, will never pause 
to consider that it is the law of gravitation which 
has caused the accident ; she will defy the law 
of gravitation, and if necessary will pray any 
one who is near to help her. Prayer, in short, 
is a natural power so important that without it 
the young of most of the higher animals would 
have little chance of life ; and it triumphs over 
almost every other natural law which may stand 
in its way. If, then, irrational animals can over- 
come the forces of dead nature in answer to 
prayer ; if man himself, in answer to the cry of 
distress, can do things in ordinary circumstances 
almost impossible, — how foolish is it to suppose 
that this link of connection cannot subsist be- 
tween God and his rational offspring ! One 
wonders that any man of science should for a 
moment entertain such an idea, if, indeed, he 
has any belief whatever in the existence of a 
God. 

There is another aspect of prayer insisted on 
in revelation on which the observation of nature 
throws some light. In the case of animals, there 






IN MODERN SCIENCE. 237 

must be a certain relation between the one that 
prays and the one that answers — a filial relation, 
perhaps — and in any case there must be a cor- 
respondence between the language of prayer 
and the emotions of the creature appealed to. 
Except in a few cases where. human training has 
modified instinct, the cry of one species of an- 
imal awakes no response in another of a differ- 
ent kind. So prayer to God must be in the 
Spirit of God. It must also be the cry of real 
need, and with reference to needs which have 
his sympathy. There is a prayer which never 
reaches God, or which is even an abomination 
to him ; and there is prayer prompted by the 
indwelling Spirit of God, which cannot be ut- 
tered in human words, yet will surely be an- 
swered. All this is so perfectly in accordance 
with natural analogies, that it strikes one 
acquainted with nature as almost a matter 
of course. 

In tracing these analogies, I do not desire to 
imply that natural* science can itself teach us 
religion, or that it is to afford the test of what is 
true in spiritual things. I have merely wished 
to direct attention to obvious analogies between 
things natural and things spiritual, which show 



238 FACTS AND FANCIES. 

that there is no such antagonism between sci- 
ence and revelation as many suppose, and that, 
in grand essential laws and principles, it may be 
true that earth is 

" But the shadow of heaven, and things therein 
Each to the other like more than on earth is thought." 



THE END. 




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